HSV increases fee for Dresden’s Königsdörffer – 4 million transfer before completion

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A transfer the likes of which the Bundesliga had never experienced before: With the signing of Kevin Keegan, HSV caused a sensation in the summer of 1977. The Hamburgers, who were striving for the top, who for their part had just won the European Cup Winners’ Cup, paid a fee of 2.3 million Deutschmarks (the equivalent of around 1.17 million euros) to Liverpool FC. But the captain of the English national team disappointed like the entire team in the first season and was also plagued with homesickness. That was to change in the second season, when “Mighty Mouse” shot HSV to their first championship title since the Bundesliga was founded with 17 goals. Keegan, twice voted Europe’s best footballer, was by then the idol of all fans – and has remained so to this day. He left HSV for Southampton in 1980 after losing the final of the national championship cup and missing the championship.

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Keegan’s internal transfer record was only to be broken 20 years later – and then twice within a few months. First it was Rodolfo Cardoso who cost more when he signed in May 1997. 1.5 million euros were transferred to the Bremen rivals after the Argentinian playmaker had previously completed a season on loan at the Volksparkstadion. The Argentinian, who was prone to injury, was to be released the following winter, but no club was found willing to pay the fee requested by HSV. So it went home twice on loan, before five seasons in the jersey with the diamond followed from 1999. Cardoso has been a coach at the club since 2005, with interruptions.

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On September 24, the Argentine was finally replaced by Anthony Yeboah after a long wrangling. After 34 months, the two-time top scorer from his time at Eintracht Frankfurt returned to the Bundesliga for a fee of 2.15 million euros. The reason for the delayed signing of the Ghanaian from Leeds United, about whose real age there had always been speculation, was his tax debt with the Hanau tax office, which he had to settle before his return.

In terms of sport, the record investment by Hamburg initially didn’t pay off, and the attacker disappointed most of the time in his first year on the Elbe. That changed in the 1998/99 season when he scored 14 goals in the Bundesliga. The top earner also impressed in the following season, before things went downhill again. Nevertheless, Yeboah stayed until the end of 2001 and in the meantime caused a stir by voluntarily extending his expiring contract by a year after the club had previously failed to do so. At the turn of the year 2001/02, an early termination of the contract was finally agreed.

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Even before that, in the summer of 2000, HSV broke its spending record twice again. After moving into the Champions League, Marcel Ketelaer, who had previously shone in the 2nd Bundesliga at Borussia Mönchengladbach and was considered one of the greatest talents in German football at the time, was signed. However, the winger could not live up to the high expectations. Ketelaer only stayed in Hamburg for two seasons, and he was unable to secure a regular place during this time. Initially on loan, the winger finally returned to his training club Gladbach, followed by a permanent transfer in 2003. Of the transfer fee of EUR 2.8 million that was once paid, only EUR 650,000 flowed back to HSV.

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In contrast to Ketelaer, Milan Fukal’s change was under bad omens from the start. The Czech hesitated for a long time before agreeing to a transfer to Germany and initially refused on the grounds that he did not want to expose his pregnant wife to a move. At the end of August, the national player finally agreed, HSV transferred 2.9 million euros to the financially troubled Sparta Prague and had supposedly found the reinforcement they were looking for on the defensive. But Fukal was never really happy in Hamburg, for a long time it was marked as a bad buy and was only a regular player in the 2002/03 season, which the club finished fourth. In the summer of 2004, like his predecessor, he moved on to Mönchengladbach.

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Great expectations that were not met – this also applies to the next record transfer in HSV history. Jörg Albertz showed strong performances in the Hanseatic city between 1993 and 1996, which he was unable to repeat after five years with Glasgow Rangers. In his first season after his return, the 5-million-buyer was still a regular when he was fit before he was retired in the second season after four appearances by then-coach Kurt Jara. “I left the first time I was in Hamburg, this time I was expelled,” he said when he left in March 2003 and was the first German professional to move to Shanghai Shenhua in China. He is said to have received a severance payment of EUR 1.3 million for the termination of the contract.

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With Bernardo Romeo, the successor to Albertz came to Hamburg in January 2002 in terms of record transfers. The striker from Argentina showed his qualities in front of the opposing goal from the start, scored a total of 45 goals in 88 games during his time at HSV and is one of the most effective goalscorers in the club’s history with an odd of 0.51. However, the goalgetter also often dived, then had hardly any game shares and a bad tackle quota. In the first half of the 2004/05 season he finally lost his regular place, and new coach Thomas Doll also stated that Romeo would not fit into his system. So it went first in the winter on loan to Mallorca, in the summer of 2005 the final separation followed. Osasuna paid a fee of 1 million euros for the forward’s services.

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When Vincent Kompany was brought in for the record sum of 10.5 million euros in the summer of 2006, the then Champions League participant seemed to have landed a real transfer coup. At the age of just 20, the defender had already played more than 100 professional games for RSC Anderlecht and was internationally regarded as a much sought-after top talent. After bad luck with injuries in his first season, coach Huub Stevens increasingly used him in defensive midfield in the second season, which the Belgian didn’t really like. There were big differences and public reproaches the following summer because of his participation in the Olympic Games. Kompany was only allowed to play at the start of the tournament in Beijing and was forced to return to the club early against his will. His departure shortly before the end of the transfer came as a surprise to many. The nouveau riche Manchester City grabbed it, where Kompany, who, according to then-President Bernd Hoffmann, had not lived up to expectations in Hamburg, became a club legend in the years that followed.

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The majority of HSV fans were overjoyed when their club brought the “prodigal son” Rafael van der Vaart back to the Elbe on Deadline Day in the summer of 2012 with the support of investor Klaus-Michael Kühne. The Dutch playmaker had regularly wowed fans between 2005 and 2008 and would put the club back on track after a disappointing season. An undertaking that the 13 million purchase and his teammates only managed in the first year before two years of tremors in the relegation games against relegation followed. The star player’s advancing age was increasingly noticeable, his expiring contract was not extended in the summer of 2015 and van der Vaart went to Real Betis Sevilla on a free transfer. He later described his return to HSV as “not the wisest step”.

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For the last time, HSV broke its own transfer record in the summer of 2016 to free Filip Kostic from VfB Stuttgart, which had just been relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga. In the poker for the services of the Serbian winger, they prevailed against VfL Wolfsburg, among others, but in the end had to transfer 14 million euros to the Swabians. Kostic did not fully do justice to the high transfer fee, in 65 competitive games he only managed 15 direct goals. After Hamburg’s historic first relegation in 2018, he quickly made it clear that he wanted to leave the club and even refused to be called up to the squad at the beginning of the season. The search for a buyer who would recoup a similarly high transfer fee was tough – and ultimately ended with a big minus from HSV’s point of view. First loaned to Frankfurt for 600,000 euros, Kostic flourished there, so that the previously agreed purchase option for 6 million euros turned out to be a bargain for the Hessians.