After falling from the top of the table, Tim Walter struggled with fate. The coach spoke about “luck”, “coincidence” and “bad luck” after Hamburger SV’s completely deserved first defeat of the season at the second division dwarf SV Elversberg.
While the league newcomer celebrated the historic first home win in German professional football, HSV had to cope with a huge shot across the bow with the 1:2 in Saarland. Fortuna Düsseldorf, which incidentally won 5-0 in Elversberg three weeks ago, overtook the big promotion favorites with a 3-1 win at Hansa Rostock.
And Bundesliga relegated Schalke 04 also made up some ground with the wild 4-3 win against 1. FC Magdeburg. The Royal Blues last overturned a 2-0 deficit in a 3-2 win against FC St. Pauli in May 2022 – at their last promotion party. Match winner Sebastian Polter and Co. are still a long way from getting there. “We have to suck it up,” pleaded double goalscorer Polter.
HSV coach Walter, on the other hand, wanted to forget the sixth matchday straight away and assured that he had “definitely not underestimated” the opponent. That’s “not our way. We know that HSV is a big club and wherever HSV goes, the clubs invest another 20 to 30 percent more.”
Boldt is missing the line from the referee
This explanation alone was obviously not enough for Jonas Boldt. In view of the two goals conceded by the VAR from Robert Glatzel (3rd/offside) and Jean-Luc Dompe (18th/foul), Hamburg’s sports director rumbled towards referee Patrick Schwengers. “If you pick out every single scene, you’ll always find something. I missed the line and, above all, the understanding of a football game,” said Boldt. He has “the feeling that we are only training how we evaluate certain scenes in the still image and not how a game management works.”
The truth is, however, that the Hamburg team allowed the hosts to take their edge off them through aggressive duels. HSV revealed weaknesses, especially defensively, and made life difficult for themselves with individual mistakes. “We kept inviting Elversberg with a lot of simple mistakes. That really annoys us,” said captain Sebastian Schonlau.
After three games without conceding a goal, Dennis Hadzikadunic made a serious mistake in the early stages. Before the score was 0-1, the HSV defender carelessly lost the ball in front of his own penalty area, so that Jannik Rochelt only had to push it in (9th). Luca Schnellbacher (60th) scored the 2-0 for Elversberg in the second period – and hit Hamburg to the core. Shortly before the end, the big favorite only managed to make it 1:2 (89th) thanks to Moritz Heyer.
Next Friday, HSV will face the next promoted team, VfL Osnabrück. “Of course I expect that we will return home from Osnabrück next week with three points,” said Schonlau.