Schlagwort-Archiv: Youth team

Finally…

Yes, finally the Magdeburg board hhave taken the step many had expected three weeks ago: Following the 1-2 defeat at the hands of Cottbus‘ reserves, manager Dirk Heyne was relieved of his post. The board were quick to declare that they would like Heyne to take on another task at the club, owing to his iconic status (408 competitive matches as goalkeeper for the club) with the fans.
Looking back, Heyne was the right manager for the club when he was first installed, back in 2003. Then Magdeburg had just escaped bankruptcy and were struggling to get out of tier IV football on a tight budget. Heyne had been managing the club’s Under 19 team and his high identification with the club in addition to his relatively low experience in management (he had been goalkeeper and youth coach at Borussia Mönchengladbach, buthad never had the responsibility of managing a senior side) made him a good solution for the club.
Over the next few years, Heyne formed a competent team that consistently played a decent game of football. As relatively few changes were made to the playing squad, the players got to know each other very well, thus compensating with teamwork for what they lacked in individual ability. In the past two seasons, Heyne’s tactic (strong defense with counter-attacking football rather than trying to dominate the opposition) yielded great results: the team was promoted from Oberliga Süd and finished 3rd in the first year in the Regionalliga.
This style of play was highly dependent on a working midfield, an attentive defense and forwards that converted the few chances they got during a match. For some reason, this did not work this season. The difficulty lies in analyzing why it did not. Of course, this season’s team differs from last season’s. Players have aged, and some have not aged well. Two forwards left and were not adequately replaced. And our best new player, midfielder Florian Müller, is to tied up in defense to effectively fulfill an attacking role.
As Dirk Heyne was incapable of solving the problems in Magdeburg’s play, his dismissal was inevitable. Now it will be interesting to see who the board present as his successor and whether they can attract helpful players in the winter break.

Oh yea, here are the Cottbus stats.
Lineups
Energie Cottbus II: Männel – Bankert, Bittroff, Franke – Hackenberg, Schuppan, Thielemann, Küntzel, Bandrowski – Hensel, Ramaj (46′ Marrack)

1. FC Magdeburg: Unger – Grundmann, Kallnik, Probst – Neumann, Habryka (64′ Kukulies), Manai, Müller, Lindemann – Agyemang, Kullmann

Score summary
26′ Schuppan 1-0
63′ Schuppan 2-0 (pen)
67′ Grundmann 2-1

Attendance
700

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.

Non-promotion and Cup win

Why could it not have been the other way round?

Anyway, FC Magdeburg youth team will meet VfB Oldenburg in the play-off for promotion to the Youth Bundesliga on the 17th and 24th of June.