Hamburger SV was already 3-0 behind in the top game in the second division in Heidenheim. In the end it was 3:3. Coach Walter’s “us against the rest” attitude is apparently paying off in the promotion race.
Tim Walter is very sure. “We would have gone under here in recent years,” said the Hamburger SV coach after a spectacular second-division game at 1. FC Heidenheim. And Walter coined another sentence that was very important to him: “This is the new HSV!”
What the 47-year-old meant by that: This new HSV can still get a 3-3 draw if they were already 0-3 behind their biggest rivals. And this new HSV keeps the competition at a distance in the promotion race of the 2nd Bundesliga, instead of seeing them regularly overtake them in the second half of the season, as has been the case for the past four years.
But what is at least as striking: The new HSV subordinates everything to its big goal of returning to the first division. Walters Wagenburg stands around his team. And at least up to now it didn’t matter what happened in front of this group of wagons.
Lots of sideshows
The power struggles at the shareholder and management levels hardly reach the team anymore. In the Vuskovic doping case, the Hamburgers managed to get the Frankfurt sports court to talk more about the weaknesses of the anti-doping system than about whether the HSV defender did doped or not.
On Saturday evening in Heidenheim, Walter then also allowed Frenchman Jean-Luc Dompé to play from the start, although he and his team-mate William Mikelbrencis were involved in a hit-and-run car accident just five days previously, in which the police now suspected an illegal Auto race determined.
“He knows he made a mistake. He also admitted it – in public and especially in our dressing room,” said Walter about Dompé. “He will be punished for that. We have sanctioned him as a club.” He also sees a kind of “therapy” for the Frenchman in his return to the pitch. “It also helps him because he loves football.”
Clear words from Heidenheim
Heidenheim CEO Holger Sanwald made it clear that you can see things differently with a clarity that is rarely heard in professional football. It is still an ongoing process and he does not want to prejudice anyone, said Sanwald in a Sky interview. But: “It’s a little different here at 1. FC Heidenheim. For us, I would rule out that guys like that play football for us again.”
The fact that Walter and sports director Jonas Boldt are standing in front of Dompé, Mikelbrencis and Vuskovic is also a signal to the rest of the team. And in this atmosphere of “us against the rest” they have long since developed a resilience that HSV has lacked for years. “It feels like a win,” said goalscorer Robert Glatzel after the Heidenheim game. “It can be really important that we come back here in the end. We always believe in ourselves. We never give up. That shows the mentality we have.”
Heidenheim were already 3-0 up thanks to goals from Jan-Niklas Beste (27th minute), Jan Schöppner (30th) and Tim Kleindienst (41st). Because the third-placed player missed several chances to make it 4-0 or even 5-0 in the first 20 minutes after the break, HSV came through Andras Nemeth (72′), former Heidenheimer Glatzel (79′) and a dream goal from Bakery Jatta ( 88.) back again.
The long-known weaknesses in defensive behavior, which could once again seriously endanger the company’s promotion, are also part of the history of this top-game spectacle. But with the “new HSV” this is also addressed openly. “We have mentality and the whole city behind us. This force is difficult to stop,” said Walter. “But you also have to talk about the first 60 minutes.”
Source: Stern
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