PFEDDERSHEIM / SAARBURG – At the end of March, some of the top league football team TSG Pfeddersheim considered whether to send their supporters to April. The intended joke: Andreas Buch returns to the Uwe Becker Stadium from the first Luxembourg league in the summer. “If they had told me that, I would have been there for this April Fool’s Day,” says the attacker, who had been chasing goals for the Pfeddersheimers for a long time until summer. But the fun never came. “”In the times of the corona pandemic, we preferred to leave it at that,” says Pfeddersheim coach Daniel Wilde. And in the end you should have resolved anyway that the attacker would continue to run for FC Differdange.
But of course that’s not true at the moment. Because, like everywhere in Europe, gaming is also suspended in Luxembourg. And since the Luxembourgers have even stricter cuts in public life, Buch cannot pursue his second job in the club sponsor’s real estate company. “Now I have a lot of time for my girlfriend and the dog,” says the 26-year-old, who, like his teammates, is condemned to his home office. That looks a little different for the footballers of the Luxembourg first division team than here. “Of course we are required to run, but there is no control,” says the striker. “But I think that everyone on the team is reasonable enough to keep themselves properly fit in case the worst comes to the worst.” Andreas Buch has his doubts about this, but of course he doesn’t want to fling at work, even if he claims to be a cozy guy at home. With and sometimes without a dog, he usually does his laps as ordered on the banks of the Saar, trying to keep his body at least at operating temperature to some extent. “Whether 14 days lead time is actually enough, if you are without competition practice for weeks or even months, I dare to doubt, but you just have to do what is possible.”
The Differdinger fitness trainer, Pascal Burger, has explored what is possible, who has given his thoughts and developed his own app. Via video conference, he connects all players three times a week and completes a program with them, sometimes even with a ball. And all of this happens within your own four walls. “It can get a little louder when you have to jump or do something with the ball. That is not easy in our small apartment, ”says Buch. He has informed his neighbors in advance that it can get a little louder, especially for the residents of the apartment below him. Still, says the attacker, the roommates in the house could handle it quite well.
As for most of his teammates, the season break two and a half weeks ago came as a surprise to Buch. “At the beginning of the week we were still training and from Thursday it was said that everyone would stay at home,” recalls the goal-getter. Since then, the Differdinger, like all other teams, have been doomed to keep their feet still. And the interruption is particularly unfortunate for the FCD. So far he’s been playing an unexpectedly good season.
After a strong start of the second half of the season, Differdange is back in third place in the Europa League qualification and also in the cup. His big goal of playing at European level was still within reach for the Bobenheim-Roxheimer. Now he can only wait and hope that if the round is canceled, the current status will not be taken from the preliminary round table. But because all of this lies outside his sphere of influence, he lets it come to him and does what is possible. In the small apartment and outside, on the running route on the Saar.
