FC Twente hosts Pafos on Thursday, 5 November, with four players still sidelined

Build-up in Enschede

FC Twente hosts Pafos FC at De Grolsch Veste on Thursday, 5 November, with kick-off at 21:00. It is the club's third match in the main phase of the Conference League, and the Enschede side arrives on the back of a 9-0 win at Excelsior on Sunday, 1 November. Earlier in the competition the club has already taken wins over FC Thun and Lincoln Red Imps. Tickets were still available on Tuesday, 3 November, when roughly 2,500 remained.

Coach John van den Brom said he is not yet thinking about the Eredivisie clash with Ajax and has no title fever, even though FC Twente is an outsider after a third of the league season. He described the club as on schedule, pointing to results, team development and cooperation within the staff. At the pre-match press conference he put it plainly:

“We are in really good shape. I am not going to change the team much.”

Injuries and team selection

Four players are still missing for the Pafos match: Lars Unnerstall, Max Bruns, Stav Lemkin and Filip Thovaldsen. Van den Brom said Unnerstall's recovery is taking longer than he and the club had expected. Lemkin, who has a stomach-wall injury, has trained with the group for some time but has not yet done full sessions and has not yet played a minute in the Eredivisie. The coach said the centre-back position has suffered injury problems with Max Bruns and Stav Lemkin for a long time, and Unnerstall's injury came on top of that.

Daouda Weidmann returns from suspension and will play, and Van den Brom said he will make few other changes. He pointed to the depth of the squad, a large group of young players able to cover when someone drops out through injury or suspension. On the setbacks he said:

“Sometimes you have to accept that, however difficult it is.”

Pafos and the Cypriot visitors

Pafos coach Ricardo sa Pinto called the game a big challenge and said the visitors expect a strong atmosphere in Enschede. He described it as a difficult assignment against a side in form and said Pafos would give everything. He said:

“This is going to be a big challenge. We expect a great atmosphere.”

Van den Brom described Pafos as a team of good, experienced individual players, with seven Brazilians in the squad who can all play football. He said they are individualistic and that he hopes Twente can profit from that, adding that he believes his side is the better team overall and more attuned to each other. André Paus, now a scout at the club and a former coach on the island, said Pafos played in the second tier during his time there and that the club invested afterwards, citing former defender David Luiz as an example.

Ajax and the weeks ahead

The next big fixture is the Eredivisie home game against Ajax on Sunday, 8 November, at De Grolsch Veste. Van den Brom said the team has not yet spoken about Ajax, and that the focus has been on Pafos since Monday, 2 November, with preparation for Ajax starting on Friday, 6 November. He credited the change in the team's mindset partly to technical director Erik ten Hag, though not only to him.

Van den Brom also singled out Sondre Orjasaeter, who is credited with five assists, and picked his goal against AZ as the best moment for the forward. The coach said Orjasaeter can make the difference in every match against every opponent, and that his output had to rise and did in the last two games.