HSV: Movin’ On Up
By: ryan_s | October 7th, 2012The past two weeks have seen Hamburger SV starkly change the culture of the season, as well as the culture of the entire team. The team had no points from it’s first three games and were about to face Bundesliga champions Borussia Dortmund and Europa League hopefuls Borussia Mönchengladbach and Hannover. After taking 7 out of 9 points from those three, HSV then undertook a tricky trip to promoted side Greuther Fürth. Last year, this sort of trip would most likely have ended up in a sloppy 1-1 draw or a shock defeat. But what happened this Saturday under the new culture?
A tight but deserved 1-0 victory and the move up to 8th in the table, tied on points with Düsseldorf for final the Europa League spot. It wasn’t a fantastic victory, and, such as against Mönchengladbach and even Hannover, HSV looked sheepish and nervous once they took the lead. There is still a lot of room for improvement, and the squad is still far from it’s potential. But isn’t it wonderful that these Hamburgers can be growing into themselves while winning three out of four? Won’t it be lovely when the team plays with confidence after going ahead and plays to bury the opponent rather than play to hold on for dear life?
Anyway, Heung Min Son is springing to life at long last. The talent was always there, but with the addition of VdV creating space for the South Korean (as well as some growing maturity), he’s suddenly turning into a goal machine with flair. His run and goal against Fürth was very impressive, even if his game still needs to be more consistent when building up play for others.
Artjoms Rudnevs, meanwhile, needs to be better. He’s starting to get into things and is still much better than Marcus Berg, but he needs to know when to not be a selfish striker sometimes (VdV looked absolutely livid when Rudnevs shot the ball into the side-netting rather than pass in front of the wide open Fürth goal) as well as how to finish when given a one-on-one with the keeper. He’s physical and somewhat pacey, and has shown that he can make intelligent runs to get open – but he needs to finish more of the chances he’s been getting. The consistency will come with more knowledge of the league as well as his teammates, hopefully.
Michael Mancienne and René Adler were both tremendous once more. Mancienne has had a couple of awful games in his HSV career, but all of the sudden he’s looking like the player that the English media were so high on when he transferred before last season. Him and Diekmeier are making steps in the right direction every game.
That being said, Adler saved us points once more – which shouldn’t be necessary. Bayern München have a wonderful goalie in Manuel Neuer, but he almost never needs to do anything. HSV are no Bayern, but you get what I’m trying to say – the less wonder saves, the better!
I was unable to watch the game this weekend as my life is no longer just of an unemployed idiot lounging around his parents’ home, but I should be able to watch HSV take on the surprisingly awful (but always dangerous) Stuttgart in two weeks. Leave your HSV lovin’ and thoughts on players below! Nur der HSV!
Category: Team News
Comments
-
mancienne seems to be getting better every game, i wonder if bruma will still get playing time. i always liked him, maybe he’d turn into mathijsen one day.
-
I just read that Denis Aogo’s absence was due to a battle with depression. After what happened to Robert Enke we know that this is no joke. I hope Denis can successfully stay on top of his battle with his condition.
-
Ryan – congratulations on your employment. (Relative to a life of carefree leisure, full-time employment is a mixed blessing. Having a job sure beats the alternative, though, if one has people to feed.)
That’s scary news about Aogo. Depression seems like a very tough battle for a professional athlete, in which any substantial deviation from a fitness routine can devastate performance.
Otherwise, the news seems dangerously positive for HSV. They have played well, played relative poorly, and still picked up points. Son looks like a new man — or, at least, he seems closer to realizing his potential now that his role is simplified and steadied.
It looks like Fink’s near-future decisions involve questions about which Bundesliga-worthy players will be in the stands rather than on the bench, which is a far cry from praying that he could field a team of 10 or 11 Bundesliga-worthy starters.
I don’t dare to dream yet, but I do dare to dream of dreaming of a team worthy of an international stage…
-
Danke schoen Jeff! Employment has definitely been better than non-employment, though I do miss the occasional soccer match!
Anyway, ya, scary for Aogo. But he’s back and been in seemingly good spirits in their friendlies, even playing in midfield. As we’ve discussed before, he is good at link-up play and bad at crosses, so him as a midfielder makes sense in theory. -
Hey folks, just a heads up that if you have Gol TV, the loss of La Liga programming has really helped for Bundesliga viewing this season. There’s 6 games on this weekend, which is getting to be a regular thing. HSV will be on on Sunday, and they will also show next Friday’s HSV game as well. Great stuff. Sorry if there are La Liga fans that are missing out though!
-
Well, DirecTV helped the La Liga fans by dumping the English GolTV feed and replacing it with beIN sports, Al Jazeera’s sports network that now features La Liga. DirecTV helpfully pointed out that I could subcsribe to its Spanish programming to get GolTV. No thanks. As result, I’m in the Bundesliga desert for the forseeable future unless beIn or Fox Soccer decides to pick it up. Bleh.
I’m hoping BeIn will dump Ligue 1 when GolTV’s Bundesliga contract runs out. I wouldn’t be surprised if BeIn’s oil funded business yanks the EPL from Fox Soccer down the road.
-
Hmmm…I didn’t realize you don’t get an English feed for GolTV! We don’t have DirecTV, Fox Soccer, ESPN, etc. in Canada, so all we have is GolTV Canada, which does have the English feed. Sometimes its GolTV commentators and sometimes its German commentators (which I vastly prefer!). But that was the only channel to get La Liga, so a lot of people miss that (but really, who cares unless it’s Real Madrid or Barca anyway!).
So you hope beIN will pick up Bundesliga and GolTV will lose it? That will be disastrous for me I guess. Anyway, I can always rely on HSV TV to get my Hamburg fix every week.
Have a good weekend!
-
I should also have mtonineed that Martin Montoya has surprisingly been called up by Vicente Del Bosque for Spain’s friendly against Chile next week. A lot of news today to keep up with
-
Just wish to say your article is as astounding. The clearness in your post is just excellent and i can assume you’re an expert on this subject. Fine with your permission allow me to grab your RSS feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue the rewarding work.
-
My wife and i ended up being ecstatic that Michael could do his reports by way of the precious recommendations he came across out of the web page. It is now and again perplexing to simply possibly be handing out facts that some people could have been making money from. We fully grasp we have the website owner to thank because of that. The type of illustrations you made, the straightforward website menu, the friendships you will help to engender – it is most astounding, and it’s really letting our son in addition to the family believe that that content is cool, and that is exceptionally vital. Many thanks for all!
-
My brother suggested I may like this website. He used to be entirely right. This post actually made my day. You cann’t imagine just how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thank you!
-
Virtually all of the items you level out is astonishingly reputable and it helps make me speculate the purpose why I had not looked at this in this gentle before. Your piece genuinely did flip the mild on for me personally as far as this subject goes. Nonetheless at this time there is actually one level I am not really also cozy with and while I consider to reconcile that with the central concept of the issue, allow me observe just what all the relaxation of your audience have to say.Very effectively carried out.
-
My wife or husband and I stumbled over below by a various website and believed I ought to check out issues out. I like what I see so i am just subsequent you. Appear forward to seeking into your world wide web site once again.
-
An interesting dialogue is value comment. I think that you need to write extra on this topic, it won’t be a taboo subject however generally persons are not enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers
-
Thanks for your strategies. One thing I’ve noticed is the fact that banks and financial institutions are aware of the spending routines of consumers and understand that the majority of people max out and about their own credit cards around the trips. They sensibly take advantage of this real fact and commence flooding the inbox in addition to snail-mail box along with hundreds of no-interest APR credit cards offers right after the holiday season concludes. Knowing that for anyone who is like 98% in the American public, you’ll soar at the one opportunity to consolidate credit card debt and shift balances towards 0 APR credit cards.
Home 
