2nd league
Hamburg (dpa) – Spring again, final sprint again in the promotion battle of the 2nd Bundesliga – and again the Hamburger SV smears. It seems as if the 2nd division is becoming the permanent home of the former European Cup winner.
After three unsuccessful promotion missions, the former first division dinosaur is faced with a heap of broken glass on the fourth attempt. The 1:2 home defeat against SC Paderborn cemented the downward trend in Hamburg. No win for five games, just two points from a possible 15 points in the past six weeks. With six remaining game days, the traditional club, sixth in the table, is nine points behind a promotion place.
Walter doesn’t want any psychological pressure
“Development doesn’t just go in one direction, it can sometimes falter,” coach Tim Walter excuses his team and sighs: “Life is not a request concert, you have to work hard.” The regular slump has nothing to do with a lack of fitness or a lack of class on the part of the professionals. When things get down to business in the season finale, your nerves will start to flutter in Hamburg on time.
Walter denies that vehemently. For tactical reasons, he doesn’t even want to have a psycho-discussion. Because that unsettles the team even more, as previous years have shown. That’s why his favorite phrase is: “We’ll stay with us.” No matter how your own games end, no matter what the competition does, no matter what the table looks like: don’t talk about it, don’t think about it, just look to the better-placed teammate on the pitch.
When a Sky reporter wanted Walter to confirm before the game that a mandatory win was due against Paderborn, he replied: “It’s mandatory for me to call my family later. It’s important for us that we have fun.” This is neither snotty nor arrogant, but part of the anti-psycho plan. Although the coach says “pressure is a privilege”, his players seem to think otherwise.
Another example was provided by the gifted soccer player Sonny Kittel, who is considered a so-called difference player with his technique, his passing game and his ideas. But when things get down to business, when deliveries have to be made, then that’s not Kittel’s thing. Then the best HSV scorer with 21 points disappears. “If you only talk about it,” reveals Kittel about the pressure to climb, “it gets stuck in your head at some point.”
HSV reveals patterns
HSV’s season pattern can’t be a coincidence. In the three previous years in the second division, the team only got nine of the possible 24 points twice from the last eight games, and only six once. A strong first half of the season was almost notoriously followed by the crash after the winter break. The biggest discrepancy was in 2018/19: first in the first half of the season with 37 points, 15th in the second half of the season with 19 points.
“Ultimately, where you are, you deserve it,” said Walter. There is little prospect of improvement if you believe the devastating statistics: HSV has never won in April. However, there were no April games in the 2019/20 Corona season.
Promotion still possible
However, HSV has not yet been written off this season. Should he win the catch-up home game on Tuesday against the penultimate Erzgebirge Aue, there is only a six-point difference to a promotion place. After that, the team could benefit from a rarely favorable constellation: the top clubs all still play against each other and steal each other’s points. Just not the HSV. Without exception, he has rivals from the lower half of the table. But the form of the team and their unstable psyche only give hope to the greatest optimists.