Schlagwort-Archiv: Ruud Kaiser

Season’s over – again

The 2010-11 season comes to a close next Saturday, and it looks very much like 1. FC Magdeburg will compete in the fourth tier for another year. What was a reason for dissatisfaction in the past two years, when Kiel and Babelsberg were promoted, is actually a source of relief. After a disastrous campaign, Magdeburg got very close to being relegated to the fifth tier. So close, in fact, as the club hadn’t been since 2002 when relegation was avoided only on matchday 33.
What had happened? After the club had tried very hard to win promotion in the past two seasons, a huge hole cropped up in the budget, and the board decided to a) lie about its existence and size, then b) admit its existence but lied about the size and then c) created a squad from scratch that was very very cheap, compared to the squads in the past two seasons. Unfortunately, along with being cheap, the team was also weak, aside from a few gifted players. Most of the team certainly had quality for a tier 5 team, but sadly, they had to compete in tier 4. At the start of the season, Magdeburg had lost two forwards who had scored 31 goals between them in the 2009-10 season. Of the team leaders in the past season, only two stayed, Daniel Bauer and Stephan Neumann. In any case, the club got off to a surprisingly good start, with 10 points from 4 matches, and then lost to RB Leipzig 1-2 after a good performance. Unfortunately, that would be the last time the team played well for quite a while – with dire consequences for their rank in the league table. After day 4, Magdeburg had led the league, but at the halfway point of the season – day 17 – they were ranked eleventh, with just four points separating the club from the relegation zone. In the winter break, forward Eddy Vorm left the club for Holland after he’d scored only once in the league, and forward Shergo Biran and midfielder Kosta Rodrigues were signed. The latter was not immediately helpful, while the former was banned from playing due to some transfer issues until March…
After matchday 24 saw the club slump to a 0-2 home defeat at the hands of Plauen, the board sacked manager Ruud Kaiser and brought in Wolfgang Sandhowe who was in charge of the reserve team at the time. The reserve was bottom of their league, too…
While Sandhowe did not at all improve the team’s playing style, Magdeburg did avoid relegation with him in charge. He did manage to get more points per game than Kaiser, but a difference of .18 is negligible at best.
The consequences of this season have already been drawn. Magdeburg will get a team manager who will be in charge of all the club’s teams. Hopefully this person will also understand that Sandhowe is not a long-term option, as his previous record with clubs is not exactly one of success. As there is an impending league reform next season, there will be no relegation from tier 4, making it an ideal season to form a new team to compete for promotion in 2013 – one of the famous two-year plans is in order, I’d say.

To sum up the various team’s performances:

  • Senior team: just avoids promotion with one matchday to go
  • Under 23: Relegated from tier 5, comes in last of 16 teams
  • Under-19: Relegated from Youth Bundesliga (top flight), 9 points behind  non-relegation spots
  • Under-17: Mid of the table, about 20 points behind promotion spot in the second-highest level
  • Under-15: Third in the top level Regionalliga Mitteldeutschland

One more thing: Next season, thing’s will be different at this here blog, although I don’t exactly know in which way. Different is all I can promise.

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.