PRE-SEASON SO FAR
This is game number four of Ipswich Town’s pre-season.
The first two were played behind-closed-doors, with Suffolk non-league side Needham Market, recently promoted to the National League North, and League One outfit Reading understood to have both visited Playford Road.
Town’s first public friendly was played in Austria last Saturday at the end of a week-long training camp over there. Kieran McKenna’s men beat Ukrainian champions Shakhtar Donetsk 1-0 at the Sportzentrum Landskron in Villach. Skipper Sam Morsy scored the only goal of the game in the 38th minute, finding the bottom corner with a crisp strike from the edge of the ‘D’. It was an encouraging performance from the team.
BACK AT PORTMAN ROAD
Twelve weeks on from the joyous pitch invasion that marked Town’s promotion we find ourselves back at Portman Road.
There will be a reduced capacity of 17,000 today due to the fact that the club faces a race against time to get infrastructure up to stringent Premier League standards in time for the big kick-off against Liverpool on August 17.
A crowd of around 15,000 is expected. Those who attend will see a new safe standing area in the Upper Cobbold, a new press box and TV gantry under construction, plus evidence of a lot more building work.
FANFREUNDSCHAFT
Ipswich’s relationship with Fortuna Düsseldorf has grown ever since a group of the German club’s fans came over to watch a game at Portman Road in 2006. Ulli Münsterberg soon formed the ‘Fortuna Blues’ supporters’ group and they have made the annual pilgrimage to Suffolk in increasing numbers ever since, making plenty of noise in the North Stand.
In 2015, Düsseldorf hosted Ipswich in a pre-season friendly at their smaller second ground, the Paul Janes Stadion. Close to 600 Town fans made the trip to watch an entertaining game that the hosts won 4-3. One of them, Grahame Carter, ended up marrying his Düsseldorf sweetheart, Ines, and moving there.
The two teams played again in the summer of 2019. This time they faced off in the Interwetten Cup in Meppen. Paul Lambert’s men, who had just been relegated to the third-tier, lost that game 4-1.
This fan friendship – or fanfreundschaft, as it is known in Germany – is now approaching two decades in the making. There could be up to 500 Düsseldorf fans at today’s game.
THE OPPOSITION
Like Ipswich, Fortuna Düsseldorf’s glory years came in the late 70s and early 80s. They won their version of the FA Cup in ’79 and ’80, got to the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in ’79 (losing to Barcelona in extra-time) and claimed the Intertoto Cup in ’84 and ’86.
Like Ipswich, they experienced financial problems in the early 00s. They slipped as low as the fourth-tier at one stage before a phoenix from the flames rise. Promotions came in 2004, 2009 and 2012. It made Fortuna the first club in German history to have gone from the Bundesliga to the fourth-tier and back again.
Instant relegation and a few mid-table years in 2. Bundesliga followed. They won the second-tier title in 2018, were relegated in 2020 and have pushed for promotion since. A recent third-place finish secured a spot in a promotion-relegation play-off game against Bochum back in May. Fortuna looked all set for a Bundesliga return when they won 3-0 away, only to lose the second leg 3-0 and suffer penalty shootout heartbreak.
Winger Christos Tzolis, on loan from Norwich City, was their tops corer with 20 goals across all competitions. The Greek international has since signed for Club Brugge.
JUST THE 90
Last weekend, Town had been due to play two 60 minute games against Shakhtar. On the day of the game, however, it was announced that it would be one 90 minute fixture.
Today’s game was originally going to be 90 minutes, plus an additional 30 minutes whatever the score, but it was announced on Thursday that the extra-time had been scrapped ‘given what is already a busy pre-season schedule’. A penalty shootout will follow the action.
The decision for reduced minutes is probably led by the fact Kieran McKenna has been working with reduced numbers in the early stages of pre-season.
WHO PLAYS?
The team that started last weekend was: Christian Walton; Ben Johnson, Luke Woolfenden, Cameron Burgess, Leif Davis; Sam Morsy, Jack Taylor; Wes Burns, Conor Chaplin, Marcus Harness; George Hirst.
Cieran Slicker, Jacob Greaves, George Edmundson and Massimo Luongo were brought on at the break, Elkan Baggott, Freddie Ladapo and Liam Delap were among five introduced on the hour, while three more changes were made after that.
Altogether, 23 different players were used, with five Under-23 players – Ryan Carr, Finley Barbrook, Leon Ayinde, Osman Foyo and Jesse Nwabueze – all getting some game time.
New goalkeeper Arijanet Muric, an £8m capture from Burnley, didn’t feature after only joining up with the squad mid-camp. Club-record signing Omari Hutchinson also didn’t play, with McKenna deciding he needs to be eased into pre-season after a physically demanding first campaign of men’s football. Axel Tuanzebe wasn’t involved either after he stayed at home for personal reasons. All three will hopefully get on the field at some point today.
More uncertain is the involvement of Nathan Broadhead, Cameron Humphreys, Harry Clarke and Ali Al-Hamadi – all of whom weren’t fit to feature last weekend. Broadhead has seen a specialist over an unspecified injury sustained behind-closed-doors, Humphreys had what was described by McKenna as ‘a little injury’, while Clarke (Achilles) and Al-Hamadi (adductor) are ‘still in the recovery process’ following end-of-season surgeries.
