The things we do for love…like spending half an hour to get to the stadium to attend the press presentation of the new 1. FC Magdeburg senior squad – despite temperatures way beyond anything that can be called comfortable.
But after last years fiasco, the club took the path of complete reconstruction, letting go 14 players while signing 12 new ones. Among the victims of this change were also Magdeburg veterans, such as Marcel Probst who had been at the club since 2002. Others, like Christian Prest, took the opportunity and retired from competitive football.
This is the new Magdeburg squad:
| No. | Position | Player |
| 1 | GK | Matthias Tischer |
| 2 | DF | Rainer Müller |
| 3 | DF | Sebastian Sumelka |
| 4 | DF | Daniel Halke |
| 5 | DF | Philipp Saalbach |
| 6 | DF | Tobias Becker |
| 7 | MF | Denis Wolf |
| 8 | MF | Manuel Stiefel |
| 9 | FW | Marko Verki? |
| 10 | FW | Marvin Wijks |
| 11 | FW | Guilherme dos Santos |
| 12 | GK | Christian Beer |
| 13 | MF | Moritz Instenberg |
| 14 | FW | Maik Georgi |
| 15 | MF | Tobias Scharlau |
| 18 | MF | Tim Girke |
| 19 | MF | Stephan Neumann |
| 20 | MF | Daniel Bauer (Captain) |
| 21 | FW | Eddy Vorm |
| 22 | FW | Patrick Bartsch |
| 23 | DF | Tobias Friebertshäuser |
| 30 | GK | Franko Flückinger |
Of particular interest are Wijks and Vorm, both of which have already played in the Dutch Eredivisie, even if only for a low number of minutes. The squad that the new manager and managing director have assembled is comparatively young, with Christian Beer the oldest player at 29 (Beer has ruptured his cruciate and will be out of action for the first half of the season) and fellow goalkeeper Franko Flückiger (4 caps for the national Under-19 team) the youngest at 19. As of July 1, the squad has an average age of only 23,2 years and is one of the youngest teams to represent the club.
It remains to be seen how they fare in the league, manager Kaiser has until 6 August to form a team from these 22 players.
In other news, the Under-23 team has won promotion to the fifth-tier Oberliga Süd, allowing the players to gather experience in a more competitive environment than before. The Under-19 team won promotion to the top-flight Under-19 Bundesliga. Both teams will be fighting relegation.
The senior team will be given no precise task in terms of a position to finish in, instead the team is expected to improve over the whole season. Here’s hoping that this works well and the fans reward that, too.
P.S. To signify a new start, I have changed the looks of the place. Hopefully I can changed the general tone of the posts too.