Brace-scorer Kalajdzic irritated he forgot to select himself for personal fantasy team
VfB Stuttgart trainer Pellegrino Matarazzo left it open whether he planned to start the scorer of a five-minute brace against VfL Wolfsburg in a crucial Sunday showdown. An injury to Orel Mangala leaves the door for a two-striker-set open.
Towering Austrian center-forward Sasa Kalajdzic (who pushes a height of two meters) can only hope that his coach does a better personnel management job than he did last week.
The attacking options for VfB Stuttgart are numerous. In this Tuesdays come-from-behind 2-2 draw against FC Union Berlin, three separate players served as the target forward in the match. After Nicolas Gonzalez and Tanguy Coulibaly took their turns up front, 23-year-old Austrian forward Sasa Kalajdzic came on in the 80th. He brought his team back from a 0-2 deficit with two goals in the remaining five minutes of normal time.
Towering Austrian center-forward Sasa Kalajdzic (who pushes a height of two meters) can only hope that his coach does a better personnel management job than he did last week.
The former Admira Wacker striker has actually tallied five times already in this campaign, and might have scored many more goals were it not for the many other talents on the Swabian side keeping him from a consistent starting position. He's begun three fixtures on the bench and didn't even feature at all in the side's 5-1 shellacking of Borussia Dortmund last weekend.
Kalajdzic has taken a back seat of sorts to the likes of Coulibaly, Gonzalez, Silas Wamangituka. Many experts sing their praises, along with those of captain Gonzalo Castro, utility-man Wataru Endo, midfield wizard Daniel Didavi, and pivot defender Waldemar Anton before Kalajdzic even gets a mention.
His trainer acknowledged that less playing time had likely affected one of his most potent weapons recently. "I think he's been hurt somewhat in the last few games because he didn't always get to play," Matarazzo noted, adding with a smile, "who knows? If I had brought him on five minutes earlier he might have scored three goals."
Kalajdzic himself didn't seem all that irked about the lack of playing time. In point of fact, he only expressed regret after the match that, not expecting to play, he hadn't selected himself for his fantasy team prior to the match.
"I was just looking at Kickbase and saw that I was a fool for not starting myself," he said in a post-match interview, "that was really stupid."