English 
Reasonable pick for the Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern cup clash
Not one, not two, but three Bundesliga giants were eliminated by Saarbrücken, who host Lautern in the semi-finals.
It’s sick, but in this year’s edition of the German Cup, there is a bigger story than Leverkusen, which is undefeated in 39 games. Let’s say Xabi Alonso’s team, according to the bookies, could practically lift the trophy right now, since they only give a multiplier of around 1.10 on that. Until then, however, two underdogs are still coming their way and it is quite possible that Bayer will clash with a third-class team in the Berlin final.
According to Transfermarkt, with a market value of only 6.98 million euros (!) modest Saarbrücken seems unstoppable. In the first round, the small team knocked out the second division Karlsruhe, which was a big surprise from the start, but since then they have successively defeated the teams of the top tier Bayern Munich, Eintracht Frankfurt and Borussia Mönchengladbach. However, the feat is not unique, as this is the second semi-final appearance in four years – exactly the same as for Bayern or Dortmund – for the third division team, which provides a concrete definition for the name “cup team”.
And the next opponent is hardly unbeatable, as Kaiserslautern, which has seen better days, should be defeated in order to reach the historic final. Lautern got promoted to Bundesliga 2 this year, but apparently it is too big a bite. After 27 laps, the Friedhelm Funkel team is in 16th place, and it is not excluded that it will change class again at the end of the year. Historically, he has a much greater routine than his opponent on Tuesday, this will be his 11th German Cup semi-final, of which he has reached the final seven times, where he has been able to lift the trophy twice so far. It is interesting that Funkel, the manager of the team, marched to the final as a Lautern player in 1981, but lost to Eintracht Frankfurt.
Neither team is in an explosive form, although their defeat at the weekend can largely be attributed to the fact that Tuesday’s decisive clash may have been on their minds. The bookmakers probably chose the guests as slight favorites because of the class difference, but we will go against this.
Saarbrücken has proven several times during the season that it can make fun of opponents with significantly greater playing power. It is worth noting that he scored the fewest goals in the competition so far, only three in four games, but he scored two goals in all the meetings.
Lautern, on the other hand, often suffers away from home, where it beat Hertha in the previous round, but during the season it could only win two out of 12 stakes matches away from its own stadium. Rüdiger Ziehl’s team, on the other hand, lost only once in the last 10 home matches, and we won’t even expand on the word, we are betting on such odds that the Bayern-killing small team will reach the first cup final in the history of Tuesday night.
