Two games, two defeats – for the two Bundesliga promoted Heidenheim and Darmstadt the season opener went wrong. On the third day of the game, points should finally come. There is hope.
The birth of the son last weekend made Jan-Niklas Beste a happy person. And the midfielder of 1. FC Heidenheim came within a hair’s breadth of becoming a hero on the soccer field. With his wonderful free-kick goal, he gave his club the lead against Hoffenheim and after the 2-0 win everything looked like the promoted team had won their first Bundesliga game.
As you know, things turned out differently. TSG turned the game around, won 2:3 and plunged FCH into a proper depression. “We had the game completely under control,” emphasized coach Frank Schmidt, who even saw himself “in the wrong film”.
Heidenheim and Darmstadt – two games, zero points
Zero points after two games – and now the Heidenheimers are going to Borussia Dortmund on Friday evening (September 1st, 2023, live from 8.30 p.m. on the radio report and in the ticker on the sports show). Schmidt and Co. want to approach the difficult task at Borussia Dortmund with the necessary respect, but also with a lot of courage. “We’re not going to soil ourselves and we’ll do our best. Be free, be brave – that’s in our DNA. I don’t want to see a team that’s wide-eyed,” says Schmidt.
One of the newcomer’s biggest hopes is Beste. In the promotion season he was the second top scorer and top scorer of the second division champions. Beste learned how to play football at Westphalian VfL Mark and at Hammer SpVg as a youth before moving to Borussia Dortmund at the age of just nine.
Happiness found in Heidenheim
After his time in the youth department of BVB and a deployment in 2017 in the 1st DFB Cup main round in the Dortmund professional team, he signed a contract with Werder Bremen. But the Bundesliga club only used him in the regional league team at first.
Bremen then loaned him out to then Dutch first division side FC Emmen and then for two seasons to German second division side SSV Jahn Regensburg. In the summer of 2022, Beste then switched to 1. FC Heidenheim – and seems to have found happiness there.
“Paid Tuition”
Like Heidenheim, the second promoted team, Darmstadt 98, has not been able to score any points so far. The 0: 1 at the start at Eintracht Frankfurt was unhappy, the recent 1: 4 on their own ground against Union Berlin a swatter.
“We learned the hard way,” said coach Torsten Lieberknecht openly. “My job now is to get the team back on their feet and give them courage for the next task,” said the coach.
Unfortunately, the Hessians are now leading the third Bundesliga game to Bayer Leverkusen (September 2nd, 2023, from 3.30 p.m. live on the radio report and in the ticker on the sports show). The team that is currently rolling up the Bundesliga and is seen by many as Bayern Munich’s most promising challenger.
Darmstadt 98: Pfeiffer and Skarke back
In such a situation, positive impulses from outside should do us good. And Darmstadt got it. In Luca Pfeiffer and Tim Skarke, the lilies brought two old friends back to southern Hesse in the final spurt of the transfer window.
Both had left the club in 2022 after a successful period and had already tried their luck in the Bundesliga back then. But neither Pfeiffer (at VfB Stuttgart) nor Skarke (at Union Berlin) were able to really assert themselves at their new clubs. Skarke got match practice as a loan player in the second half of the season at least in the Schalke jersey.
More penetrative power forward
Both additions should give 98 more penetrating power forward – which is urgently needed after looking at the previous two Bundesliga appearances. Skarke joined the Lilien from 1. FC Heidenheim in the summer of 2019 and had mostly been a regular player in the three years. In three years he made 81 competitive appearances, scoring 13 goals and putting on a further seven goals.
Luca Pfeiffer has not scored a Bundesliga goal so far. The fact that in his two previous appearances for Torsten Lieberknecht’s team he was at least very close twice with two shots against the post gives hope for an end to the dry spell and thus for an improvement at Darmstadt 98. “You could see that he was helping us. That’s important,” emphasizes Lieberknecht. They are all hoping for a breakthrough now – in Leverkusen.