Sports director of the second division first team
©IMAGO
13th place in the squad value ranking, first place in the table: For SV 07 Elversberg, the season in the 2nd Bundesliga has been going like clockwork so far – and for one or two experts, significantly better than expected in the summer. Sports director Nils-Ole Book now explained why he extended his contract in Saarland despite numerous calls from the Bundesliga. In the run-up to the duel with SpVgg Greuther Fürth, the 39-year-old also spoke about the SVE as a springboard for top talent, the upheaval in the summer and the dream of the upper house.
“With the failure in the relegation and the departure of our head coach the next day, I had the feeling that I should definitely not leave the club in this situation, but rather that I would like to rebuild the team and help the club build a coaching team. In the summer, responsibility was the top priority, but I also communicated transparently with our executive committee that there will come a point in time when I will think about my own future,” said Book in an interview with dem “Kicker” with a view to his contract extension. The sports director had recently been considered the successor to Roland Virkus, particularly at Borussia Mönchengladbach. However, the decision to continue to commit to the second division club after eight years was “made well beforehand,” confirmed Book.
“If I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s humility. It’s important to me that I enjoy working here, that I have a great environment with a good team and a fresh coaching staff, and that I also have a great relationship with our employees and our president, so that we can all work together constructively and with short decision-making processes. Whether it’s in containers or whether the stadium still has a construction site are external things that don’t interest me. But of course it is “It’s true that most people have the desire to work at the highest level in football, and that remains the case for me, but so far I have the feeling that things are still going up for us,” Book continued.
Book and SV Elversberg: “My motivation is to inspire people”
Elversberg has impressed so far, even though last year’s third-place team lost both their coach and several top performers in the summer. After eight match days, Horst Steffen’s successor Vincent Wagner’s team greets them from the top of the table with 19 points. The question of promotion has been omnipresent since the last matchday at the latest, but when asked about it, Book kept a low profile: “My priority is not which league it is, but my drive is to build an even better football team, to inspire people. That’s what’s so addictive.” The sports director put the brakes on euphoria by “not overestimating” the current standings in the league table – the team remains “completely grounded” and is still “not the club that has any claim to promotion to the Bundesliga.”
Wagner turned out to be a lucky choice for the coaching position, said Book. “The crucial point was to find a coach who would let the boys continue to live our common idea of football, who would bring a lot of offensive courage, who wanted to play constructively and not just play with long balls. Because the boys have performed so incredibly in recent years and have exceeded all expectations, I had the feeling that there shouldn’t be a complete paradigm shift, not even in the human approach. The one Vincent has preferred in recent years The way we played had a lot of overlap with ours, even if you can now see that there are also clear differences. I also really liked him during our first conversations and I saw it as my most important task to put the boys in good hands.”
Despite the good results, the Beckum native still sees room for improvement at SVE in terms of sport. “I think that we can improve our decision-making in the final third and that we can use the many promising attacks, in which we are already totally creative and flexible, in an even more targeted manner. In addition, remaining defense is certainly an issue and I believe that we can play even more confidently on the ball and more patiently.”
Training advantage SV Elversberg: “Peace and short decision-making processes”
It is no coincidence that the second division team has repeatedly proven to be a springboard for young top talents in recent years, such as Nick Woltemade or, most recently, Fisnik Asllani. “Many years ago, I thought very intensively about the advantages and disadvantages of the location in Elversberg. Back in the days of the regional league, we were sometimes laughed at, but we always had the advantage that we had short decision-making processes and media calm. We based this strategy on that, saying: We explicitly want to work with young top talents because they can develop in peace with us. The fact that they were mostly loan players was because the big talents “We can only get them through these business models, but this year we also have some very, very exciting young players under contract.”
He doesn’t want to put the burden of comparing a player in the current squad with Woltemade or Asllani on anyone. The mix of experienced and young professionals is what makes Elversberg’s successful model, explained Book. “We have had such valuable, experienced supports for years who have been incredibly good for the team. These pillars are incredibly important to us. This year, for the first time, some pillars have broken away because our own success got in the way, aroused desire and we couldn’t keep up financially, but that’s completely normal. I believe that we can develop even more significantly if – like in previous years – we have a lot of players together again for years.”