AUDIO: Ex-HSV coach Bolz at SC Braga (2 min)
As of: January 6, 2026 12:54 p.m
Marwin Bolz has a crazy year ahead of him in 2025. Despite promotion to the Bundesliga with the HSV women, his contract was not extended. But things continued seamlessly for the football coach in Portugal with SC Braga in the European Cup. He wants to be even more successful in 2026.
Marwin Bolz immediately immersed himself in a new world. One day he celebrated promotion to the Bundesliga with the HSV footballers and around 80,000 fans in downtown Hamburg. “These are moments you don’t forget.” A good 24 hours later he was already on the plane to Portugal to sign his contract as the new head coach at SC Braga.
It was “a bit surreal.” And in the months that followed, the 27-year-old barely had time to reflect on everything that had happened in his life over the past few months.
“We played five competitions,” explains Bolz in the NDR interview, referring to his beginnings in Braga. “From the Champions League qualification to the European Cup, to two cup competitions and the league competition in Portugal.” That’s not the only reason why it felt good to be with the family in Hamburg-Duvenstedt over the Christmas period, to recharge the batteries and enjoy the feeling of home.
Bolz leads the HSV women back into the Bundesliga
Bolz led the HSV women through the second division for two seasons and back into the first division in May after 13 long years in which they had gone down to the Hamburg city league. The club and the coach had already agreed in the spring to go their separate ways after four years – Bolz had previously been assistant coach for two years.
“It was a bit surreal: I was at the peak of emotions during the climb – and in the next moment I had to switch gears and concentrate on the next task again.”
Marwin Bolz
Without their promotion coach and their captain Sarah Stöckmann, who also did not get a new contract, the HSV women started in the Bundesliga – where they are in second-to-last place at the end of the semester.
Bolz looks back without resentment; the separation was “amicable,” as he emphasizes. Because where one door closed, the other opened. Through his Portuguese agent, Bolz finally received an offer to take over the SC Braga women’s team – third in the previous season in Portugal and thus in the play-offs for the Champions League.
Job with significantly more management tasks
An attractive task – and one “with a lot of growth,” says Bolz. It is a challenge with many more leadership tasks: while the team behind the team at HSV consisted of half a dozen people, in Braga there are three times as many. In Brage there is also profitism in the women’s sector – at all levels.
It is also Bolz’s first engagement abroad. That meant a new environment and also a new language. However, he speaks Spanish fluently and can therefore get by with the usual “Portuñol”, the mishmash that Spaniards and Portuguese use to communicate. He brought his assistant coach Lukas Wenzel with him from Hamburg, and his assistant coach Berta Prat Hernandez is Catalan. But there are mainly Portuguese women in the squad.
Sporting record is mixed at best
However, the interim sporting results are mixed after six months of the two contract years. After a major personnel change in the summer, qualifying for the Champions League ended after two games, just like the European Cup, in which Braga lost to Anderlecht. Braga is currently only seventh in the league.
Bolz and his team are still there in both the League Cup and the State Cup, in which they managed a 1-0 win against the great Sporting Lisbon in the round of 16. For the coach, the cup success against Sporting was “an exclamation mark”. A necessary one at that. Club president Antonio Salvador, who regularly contacts the coach personally, always has high standards and also expects titles from the women’s team.
Bolz: “The culture is very emotional and crazy about football”
In addition, there are great expectations in the environment. “It’s a small town, which means you get recognized quickly,” reports Bolz, who is often asked for selfies and autographs. “The club is deeply rooted in everyone, everyone has a connection to it. The culture is simply very emotional and crazy about football.”
Bolz feels he is in the right place at the right time. Also, “because I believe that I am the right coach to deal with all this emotionality. I am very balanced.”
(Title) hopes rest on the cup competitions
Stress resistance is definitely required in the new year. Braga started their short preparation for the rest of the season on December 29th. There are six games in January alone.
Bolz is optimistic that the second half of the year will be more successful than the first. “We will get the answer to the question of what our hard work is worth. I’m looking forward to that.” After all, after the big HSV party in 2025 next spring, the 27-year-old wants to ensure the next party with a cup triumph – this time in Portugal.
