Dynamo Dresden – Schalke 04

The home team will not lose to poorly performing away opponents.

Dresden Dynamo, during the years of the division of Germany into West and East, was one of the most titled clubs in the Eastern bloc. This team won the GDR championship title eight times and became the penultimate winner of this championship in the 1989/1990 season. The last historical period for the Dresden club has been less successful. They left their latest Bundesliga season in 1995, after which they travelled between the regional league, the Third League, and the Second Bundesliga. In the current season the Dynamo players are once again newcomers to the second-highest division in Germany with unclear prospects. Schalke, unlike their opponent, won the national championship six times even before the war, and after the reunification of Germany, they became runners-up five times. Schalke are the club that is awaited in the Bundesliga, but they have been in the second division for three years now. Moreover, the last two championships did not show any clear ambition from the Gelsenkirchen team to return to the elite. Bookmakers have made the home side the favourites for the upcoming match, offering odds of 2.38 on their victory. After their promotion, Dynamo Dresden acquired defensive midfielder Kofi Amoako from Wolfsburg, who had a solid season with Osnabrück in the Third League last season, bought the rights to forward Christoph Daferner from Nürnberg, who had been previously loaned and performed well, as well as signed several free agents. It turns out that Dynamo is trying to move forward in the Second Bundesliga with almost the same squad that secured second place in the Third League last season. So far, the results have been mediocre, but after the initial defeats of the championship against Greuther Fürth and Magdeburg, the Dresden team managed to beat Arminia away a week ago, scoring the winning goal in the 90+10th minute. Schalke lost youth national team player Taylan Bulut during the off-season, who was released to Beşiktaş for 6 million euros. After selling a few more players, the miners reinforced their squad with a couple of footballers from Holstein Kiel, as well as players from Swiss and Belgian teams. In the opening rounds, Schalke won twice at home and lost away to Kaiserslautern. We will place a bet in favour of the home side, for whom a victory in the last round would boost their confidence.