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Matija Nastasic's face says it all
Photo: RONNY HARTMANN / AFP
On Tuesday the Ruhr area clubs Rot Weiß Essen and Borussia Dortmund were still cheering, on Wednesday the district clubs went as losers from the field: The favorites VfL Wolfsburg and RB Leipzig prevailed against Schalke 04 and VfL Bochum.
Schalke had to compete in Wolfsburg without the entries Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (injured) and Shkodran Mustafi (quarantine), the top performers Suat Serdar and Benito Raman also fell ill, not good conditions for the bottom of the Bundesliga in the third division of the league.
Nevertheless, the Royal Blues sold well in the first half, were defensively safe and also struggled to move forward.
But this season, Schalke are simply not blessed with luck: access William, who had just moved from Wolfsburg to Gelsenkirchen, caught Wolfsburg's Xaver Schlager on the edge of the penalty area, the referee decided after examining the video evidence on a penalty.
Wout Weghorst initially failed to Ralf Fährmann, but slipped the margin to 1-0 into the net.
On the other hand, Matthew Hoppe missed the very large equalization opportunity from three meters away because VfL keeper Koel Casteels showed an impressive foot reflex.
In 99 out of 100 cases such a ball is in the goal, but not at Schalke, not this season.
In the second half, the guests rarely managed to get forward dangerously.
The Wolfsburg no longer had to invest everything to bring the lead over time.
Once it smelled like equalizer, but Mark Uth couldn't get past Casteels in the 73rd minute either.
When Hoppe missed again from a good position, the cup knockout was perfect.
RB Leipzig left no doubt about progress in the 4-0 (2-0) over VfL Bochum.
After just 11 minutes, Amadou Haidara took the lead against the second division side.
The Bochumers, like Leipzig currently second in their league, were impressed by the early deficit and the dominance of the top team.
So the team of coach Julian Nagelsmann was able to continue almost gently.
Shortly before the break, captain Marcel Sabitzer confidently converted a penalty kick to 2-0, and the game was as good as decided.
Even after the change, the guests were too harmless, the game only had a few highlights.
Leipzig spared itself for the next tasks, VfL also seemed to concentrate more on promotion plans in the league than to want to turn the game in Leipzig.
Yussuf Poulsen's 3-0 after 66 minutes made everything clear.
A short time later (74th minute), Poulsen added his second goal to make it 4-0.
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