Kategorie-Archiv: U19

Some new season, same old league

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.

We can turn things round

Today, for the first time since December, FC Magdeburg’s first team was involved in a competitive match. Since that 1-2 defeat in Cottbus, a number of things have changed in the club.
First of all, a new manager was put in charge, Paul Linz of Trier fame. Three new players were brought in, two forwards and one very experienced allrounder who can play almost everything – Christian Reimann, Najeh Braham (2004 African Cup of Nations winner) and Steffen Baumgart, respectively.
Then, Paul Linz changed the system – instead of Dirk Heyne’s favored 3-5-2, Magdeburg now play 4-4-2. Despite the problems that such a change usually brings, Magdeburg conceded only twice in their preparation matches, one goal each against Sachsen Leipzig and Schalke 04. Also, Magdeburg started to score themselves, losing but one of the preparation matches.

Thus, there was an overall optimism that the team would perform sufficiently well to beat tier IV side Halberstadt in the FSA-Cup today. In addition to that optimism came the knowledge that in the past years, Halberstadt had never ever scored against Magdeburg in a competitive match.
Until today: After a terrible start to the game, Magdeburg’s goalie Unger was stumped in the 12th minute, when Halberstadt’s Gottwaldt put the ball away after a corner kick. However, Magdeburg quickly retaliated and it was new forward Najeh Braham who headed in a Gerster freekick ten minutes later. Magdeburg were still unable to control the game, and especially the right side of the back four were a constant source of trouble, with right defender Friebertshäuser being constantly outpaced by his opponents and…then there was Kallnik. Kallnik is playing the same way he has played since his 30th birthday – slow, no vision, no positioning. When Friebertshäuser had to resort to yet another foul near the box, there was a general feeling of danger in the air, and justifiedly so. Again Gottwald scored and Magdeburg went into the halftime one goal down.

Shortly after the break – and after another Kallnik-caused breakaway when Magdeburg’s Unger had barely won the 1-on-1 – Linz finally saw fit to replace him. He subbed in Zander and Florian Müller for Kallnik and a not very efficient Baumgart, respectively. With this substitution, there were a number of position changes. Left defender Wejsfelt moved to the center, left midfielder Neumann took over as left defender. Lindemann, whose turn as a classic 10 turned out to be an utter disaster, moved to the left, allowing Zander to take over as playmaker. This served to calm the game, as Zander at least tried to pass the ball quickly, Magdeburg were slowly gaining a foothold over Germania Halberstadt. The hosts had resorted to defending their lead, and this they didn’t do too badly. When the equaliser still wouldn’t come, Linz changed formation – he substituted Agyemang for Friebertshäuser (who had gotten better after Kallnik was gone…) and switched to a 3-4-3. That eventually tipped the scales in Magdeburg’s favor, and it was once more Braham who equalised once more with just 7 minutes to go. Agyemang missed the chance to decide the game in regular time, and so extra time was required, much to the chagrin of Magdeburg’s chairman who had to cut short his afternoon plans. In extra time, Halberstadt started to push a little more again, realizing they probably wouldn’t survive thirty minutes without conceding. But it did them little good, as it was Braham’s day today: Just one minute into the second half of extra time, Braham headed home once more, deciding the game in Magdeburg’s favor.

What can be learned? First of all, we have forwards. We do indeed, and they (well, one of ‚em) score, too. Second, if you have to play Prest as a central defender because he’s the tallest, you should put a quick central defender next to him, not an aging 32year-old whose only merit right now is the captaincy. Kallnik has no place in the back four, he’s too slow, he doesn’t position well and he lacks vision. Third, Paul Linz makes changes when he sees something wrong. That’s good. The best part of it being that his changes actually work.

In other news, our U23 won a postponed match yesterday, beating Hallescher FC U23 4-3 eventually. They had led by a 3-0 margin at half-time but through individual errors allowed Halle to equalise, despite their being a man down shortly after the break. Unfortunately, some individuals in the guest area thought the 3-3 equaliser was the signal to toss rockets and smoke-bombs onto the pitch. The police removed Halle’s supporters and afterwards Deumelandt scored the winner.

Our U19, struggling as the team is in the U19-Bundesliga, managed to grab a point at Hertha BSC U19, finishing the game 2-2 despite being 0-2 down at half-time. Here’s hoping that will not be the last points for them.

Now that was fun!

Yesterday, while Germany celebrated its national holiday (Day of German Unity, read about it here), several of the football associations that are part of the German FA used the opportunity to play their respective cup tournaments.
In Saxony-Anhalt, it is called Lotto-Pokal, and the record winners are 1. FC Magdeburg. As a Regionalliga side they had a bye in Round 1, and the U23 received another bye, on the grounds of having won the cup in the last season. Yesterday, both teams played in the second round, and both won. Naturally I was unable to attend both games, so a friend and I decided t go to Wernigerode to watch the match of FC Magdeburg first team there.
The pitch was one of the smallest I have seen so far. The distance between the touch line and the spectators can’t have been more than two feet and thanks to this the pitch had another peculiarity: both benches were behind one of the goals.
Magdeburg faced a tier VI side, FC Einheit Wernigerode, and so the game was widely expected to be a rather one-sided affair, although some doubt had crept up due to Magdeburg’s series of bad results.
Dirk Heyne fielded an experimental squad, with a freshly fit Ivica Jarakovi? up front together with Matthias von der Weth. Florian Müller got valuable bench time, as did Stephan Neumann and Christopher Kullmann. Nevertheless, Magdeburg dominated the game from the start and took an early lead, only to have it promptly disallowed for offside. Then Wejsfelt scored, with the same result. But when Wejsfelt headed a corner into the goal, it finally stood and Magdeburg were one up. For the remainder of the first half Magdeburg dominated, but were unable to capitalize on their superiority, thanks to some decent reflexes by Einheit’s goalie.
In the second half, this continued and when Magdeburg got a freekick in front of goal, the choice fell on Lindemann to hit it – and hit it he did, firing a low shot past the wall into the corner that was goalkeeper territory. At least it should have been, judging from the position of the wall, yet the goalie was nowehere to be seen.
Eric Agyemang who had been subbed in for von der Weth brought home another goal after some great work by Jarakovi?. All in all, a very fun hundred-mile round trip with a decent result.

Line-up (only the Magdeburg one, I didn’t catch a program so I’m at a loss for the Wernigerode players)
Unger – Wejsfelt (Grundmann), Prest, Otte – Kallnik (Habryka), Müller – Lindemann, Manai, Tornieporth – von der Weth (Agyemang, Jarakovi?

Goals
Wejsfelt 1-0
Lindemann 2-0
Agyemang 3-0

The U23 team beat Tier IV side VfB Sangerhausen with one goal from defender Marcel Probst apparently.
In the next round, 1. FC Magdeburg will not travel very far – the first team will play Magdeburger SV Preußen (last season’s finalists) while the U23 squad will face Germania Halberstadt, who they beat in the semi-final of last season’s competition. Matches are scheduled to be played on October 13 and 14, although at the moment both the first team and the U23 match are assigned the same date – but here’s hoping I can see both.

On an entirely unrelated matter, FC Magdeburg U19 won their first Bundesliga match when they beat Tennis Borussia Berlin on a 4-2 scoreline.

What a weekend…

Our first team lost 1-2 at Oberhausen, with an own goal by our keeper helping Oberhausen.

Our reserve lost 0-1 against Grün-Weiß Wolfen who had been deducted 3 points for subbing in a non-eligible player on the first matchday of the season. When everyone was just coming to terms with the nil-all draw, the referee blew for a blatant penalty, after a Wolfen player had fallen down in the box. He had collided with a Magdeburg player, there was no foul play. Anyway, Wolfen converted the penalty, so Magdeburg’s U23 (as that’s what the reserve is nowadays) dropped down to second place.
At the end of the season, all the first-placed team will be promoted to the Oberliga, the second-placed team will face the vice-champion of Berlin’s 5th tier in a play-off. All other teams stay in the Verbandsliga, but the league will drop to tier 6, due to the league reform.

To make the day of defeat complete, our third team lost as well…
The U19 and U17 teams did not play, due to other competitions taking precedent.

Here’s hoping that the first team’s match against unbeaten league leaders Düsseldorf will be as successful as the Lübeck match.

Where have you gone, Dynamo Dresden?

To answer my own question – home without points and goal.
Like in March, 1. FC Magdeburg won 1-0 against Dynamo. This time around, Lindemann scored from a 30-yd free kick.
The rest of the game was horrible as ever, zero improvement over the Cottbus match in the week before.

Facts:
4′ Lindemann 1-0

Attendance: 16,527

In other news, our U19 lost their first Bundesliga match 0-4 in Wolfsburg, while our reserves (now officially a U23 team) won their away game at Staßfurt 1-0.

Well, that’s something at least

Today, another FC Magdeburg team (after or B and C teams) gained promotion: Our U19-squad won the second of two play-off matches against VfB Oldenburg with the final scoreline of 3-0.
The match was similar to the first leg in Oldenburg, both teams were trying to get a goal right from the start, as both teams needed to win the match in order to avoid extra time. However, Magdeburg got off to a better start, and after a terrible mishap on the part of Oldenburg’s keeper, Magdeburg scored to make it 1-0.
Afterwards, Oldenburg tried to build up more pressure, but they just couldn’t get past the Magdeburg defense, and in the rare instances they did, FCM-goalie Schwabke was there to deny them.
When Magdeburg scored their 2nd goal from a header after a long ball, the game looked all but over – but suddenly Magdeburg became more defensive, less keen on taking the ball out of their own half and thus Oldenburg created some chances, but again they couldn’t convert any of them.
After the half-time break, Magdeburg was already celebrating yet another goal, but the referee ruled it offside. Afterwards the game was in the balance as Oldenburg was now dominating with their short-passing game, but again they were ineffective in front of goal, and so it was only a matter of time until Magdeburg created the 3-0 from a counter. After that, the game was decided and Magdeburg promoted to the U19-Bundesliga. A little consolation after the unfortunate end of the Regionalliga season.