Merlin Polzzin led HSV to the Bundesliga after seven years. The 34-year-old has written the next amazing chapter in his already film-like story as a trainer. Without a devastating diagnosis, the life path of the native of Hamburg would probably have been completely different.
It is a familiar picture of training sessions of the HSV: While the players warm up under the guidance of athletic coach Jan Hasenkamp, Merlin Polzzin juggles with the ball. 20, 30 times he keeps up with the play equipment. In these moments you can see that the 34-year-old could have become a very good footballer. Polzin had already made it to the Oberliga team of his youth club Bramfelder SV in 2010, and was considered the upcoming man in defense. But then the defensive talent dipped overnight.
For weeks, the BSV managers tried to reach the former captain of their A youth team. Vain. After a doctor opened him to end his career in his toes due to osteoarthritis, a world collapsed for Polzin.
As a player a stroke of luck for the coach Polzin
“The most important thing in life was stolen to me. I can no longer play football,” he later wrote on Facebook, as the then Bramfeld assistant coach Matthias Herzberg remembered in the “Bild”. “The stupidest for him came what could happen to him at the time. In retrospect, it is positive,” added today’s sporting director of the club with a view to the early beginnings of Polzzin’s coaching career.
He was able to devote himself to his end as a player at the age of 19. 15 years later, the Bramfelder Jung ‘ – he never played at another club – made immortal at the HSV fans. His contract also automatically extended by one year by jumping up.
From fan to the promotion coach
It is a Cinderella story that a Hamburg and glowing HSV supporter, who used to cheer on the team in League in the curve of the Volksparkstadion, ended the seven-year period of suffering in League. Because if the HSV managers had followed the usual laws of professional football, Polzin would have long since flown out. After all, it is customary that if a head coach is released, his assistant is also permitted.
But Polzin, which Daniel Thioune had brought to the Uwe Seeler Allee in 2020 as a co-coach from VfL Osnabrück, was the constant in the HSV staff in the following years. While the football teachers Thioune, Tim Walter and Steffen Baumgart were released from their tasks, he was allowed to stay.
Ex-board member Boldt as a great sponsor
“He has continuously matured as a person, but also as a coach over the years and has taken very much step forward. I quickly noticed that he was a great talent of coaches, but his path is far from over,” said former sports director Jonas Boldt about the assistant coach at the time.
In retrospect, it was one of the greatest merits of the non -controversial official to have always held the protective hand over polezin. Thus, the club not only received an employee with an extremely high identification for his employer, but also a very talented coach who always tries to expand his horizon and to give the team new input.
Thiune opens Polzin the door to professional football
In a positive sense, the 34-year-old changes in the footsteps of “slip of paper Ewald”. So the experienced coach Ewald Lienen, who received his nickname because of his preference for notes on a writer. Polzin also states in writing, he was considered relevant to his work. Not on the edge of the field, but at home. In the meantime, a lot of paperwork has come together. Especially last year during his training as a football teacher. He hospited FC Barcelona, among others, and his German coach Hansi Flick.
Polzin may have already incorporated the experience gained there into his work at the HSV. Because: “He absorbs a lot and transports it into the team. It is well received,” said Thioune about his former assistant coach. Today’s coach of Fortuna Düsseldorf has a large part in the steep career of the Hamburg promotion coach. Because it was he who opened Polzin 2014 the door to professional football.
Ascent with the Osnabrück professional team
The story behind it? Crazy! Because after Polzin had moved to Osnabrück for studying, he just stopped by the B-youth training of VfL and offered Thioune, who supervised the team at the time, to make game observations for him. The scouting of the teacher student (German and sport) convinced Thioune. He accepted Polzin in his coaching staff.
After working together on the U17 and U19 together, they took over the Osnabrück professional team, climbed into the second division with the Lower Saxony (2019) and held the class in the following season. Incidentally, because on the 32nd matchday a surprising 1-1 at HSV succeeded. These points should lack the Hamburgers in the final statement in the fight for the ascent.
Polzin initially intended as an interim solution
The change from Thioune and Polzin to the Volkspark followed. Now the latter was back in his hometown and back with the club, for which he has been enthusiastic since childhood. “In any case, it is not a job, but my greatest passion, which I was luckily able to make a profession,” he said as an assistant coach during his time.
It must have hurt him all the more that his HSV missed the return twice in the relegation. And that his HSV only finished fourth last season and that the Bundesliga return was threatened again in this series until those responsible pulled the ripcord at the end of November of last year and left the hapless Baumgart.
HSV under Polzin hardly to recognize
Polzin, who had already looked after the team after the end of Baumgart predecessor Walter in a 2-2 at FC Hansa Rostock, was again enthroned as a temporary solution. As head coach, the 34-year-old was initially not in discussion. Ruud van Nistelrooy, Friedhelm Funkel and especially Bruno Labbadia very well. But then the HSV won the first game after the Baumgart-Aus at Karlsruher SC 3-1 and was hard to recognize.
Sports board member Stefan Kuntz wanted to “break the wave” and decided to continue with Polzin until the winter break. Out of conviction? Or out of necessity? This is still puzzled in Hamburg to this day. The rumors persisted that Kuntz with Labbadia was already in very far advanced conversations, but the coach ultimately canceled him because the decision -making process took too long.
For Lukas Kwasniok from SC Paderborn 07, the HSV is said to have even offered a high transfer fee. Kuntz later only confirmed that the club had dealt with other trainers. The fact is: after the turn of the year, Kwasniok publicly complained that his club had built a great opportunity.
Heuer Fernandes: “Merlin takes everyone every day”
This then received Polzin. After two wins and two draws as an interim coach, he was promoted to the chief coach shortly before Christmas. According to reports, the team is said to have advertised this solution from Kuntz and sports director Claus Costa.
“Merlin and his team of coaches made us better as a team. Merlin takes everyone with him. Really everyone. Everyone feels valued. Everyone wants to give their maximum in their area. This gives us a good feeling in the cabin. This creates an energy in which everyone feels addressed,” Keeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes soon praised the young coach over the green clover.
“Harmonious, homogeneous interaction with each other”
But not only his players are taken with the young coach. “He is a great guy, totally empathetic person who can capture people,” said Daniel Brinkmann in the podcast “in the coach’s head”.
The trainer of the third division club FC Hansa Rostock completed the football teacher course with Polzin and was on a flying visit to the HSV a few weeks ago. He made an observation that impressed him: “You simply notice it in dealing with the other staff members. It is a very harmonious, homogeneous handling of each other. And I believe that he also stands for creating this connection and this moderation is currently very, very good.”
Don’t be afraid of uncomfortable decisions
Brinkmann’s knowledge coincides with the statements of Polzin. The 34-year-old never speaks in the first-person form. His favorite word is “Staff”. With his assistant Loïc Favé (32 years) and Richard Krohn (29 years), he forms an extremely young team of coaches that acts at eye level. Anyone who observes the trio in the exercise units sees three very concentrated, but also loose contemporaries who apparently speak the language of the players.
The former assistant coach Polzin and the Favé and Krohn, who was previously an assistant to the regional league team, gained respect, but also through hard decisions. There would be the suspends by Moritz Heyer (now at Fortuna Düsseldorf) and Uwe-Seeler-Kel Levin Öztunali, the out of the former athletic coach Daniel Müssig and the degradation of captain Sebastian Schonlau.
“I just had to go to the toilet, I didn’t stand it. Fuck it, we did it. The HSV is back!”
– Merlin Polzin, who suddenly disappeared into the cabin in the final phase of the game against Ulm
Kuntz successful as a crisis manager
Measures that were controversial and would have been questioned again if the sporting success had failed to materialize. And in the meantime it had looked like the bankruptcy against Eintracht Braunschweig (2: 4) and the Karlsruher SC (1: 2) as if the HSV could also miss the big goal of Bundesliga.
But then the young coach came to the side, who was apparently not entirely convinced that Polzin already had the maturity for the job: Stefan Kuntz. The sports director deserved as a psychiatrist, spoke to the unsettled players about difficult situations and gave them solutions.
“The experience of Stefan is good for us. He found the right words,” praised striker Davie Selke the European champion from 1996. The attacker was important in the same breath to emphasize: “The coaching team also hired us outstandingly.”
HSV as a family: “Try to get better every day”
Polzin, Favé and Krohn may feel flattered. With a lot of specialist knowledge, meticulousness and the right address, you have led the HSV back to the football upper house. And even if there is undoubtedly a certain spell on this ascent, the mastermind of success does not want to see itself as a magician. The successes achieved, said Polzin before the climb, were the result of the great commitment of all employees – from the coaching team to the office: “We are trying to get better every day.”
With this ambition, its authentic way and the stringence in decision -making, Polzin has managed to not only preserve the good inland climate that has already existed, but also to improve the culture of performance.
(Young) father of the promotion success: Merlin Polzin.
“Merlin’s meticulousness and passion for our sport and our club are impressive. In addition, Merlin with his open, loyal and positive way is very well received by the players and his colleagues in the staff,” says sports director Costa about the man who might never have become HSV promotion coach if osteoarthritis had not forced him to give his player career at an early stage.
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Sports club | 11.05.2025 | 10:50 p.m.
