Our Under-19s travel to Germany for our single-leg Round of 16 tie in the UEFA Youth League.
The game is scheduled to begin at 13:00pm (UK) on Wednesday 5 March with the match also available to watch live on CITY+.
Ahead of the trip, Wilkinson detailed his thoughts on our opponents, the importance of the prestigious competition in player development and what it would mean to the team to progress to the quarter-finals of the competition.
And whilst reaching the next stage of the competition would be exciting for the players and Wilkinson, the Lead Coach also reiterated the importance of the game in testing our Under-19s in new, challenging environments.
“It would mean a huge lot, a huge amount,” said Wilkinson when asked what it would mean to him to overcome Hoffenheim.
“It would ultimately give us one of these opportunities where we want to see the players perform in these more pressured environments where the game is going to be real close and decided on by small details.
“So for us, it’s the perfect game, we’ll learn a lot about the players and obviously we want to win the game for ourselves but also go a bit further in the competition.
“I don’t think we’ve quite performed as well as we could have done over the years and then to keep giving the players the opportunities to perform in those sort of environments is probably the most important thing.”
Watch Wilkinson’s preview for Hoffenheim in full via the video above..
