Baumgart: “We need to be really aggressive out of possession” before demonstrating “great quality in attack”

The press conference room at the Volksparkstadion was busy when HSV head coach Steffen Baumgart stepped up to the microphone on Friday (1st March) at 13:30 CET. He had previously given his team a two-hour training session before speaking about the past week, the squad situation and the next opponents. One thing that is particularly important for Baumgart is not taking the game for granted just because Osnabrück sit bottom of the table. He made it very clear that this means nothing in an evenly-balanced 2. Bundesliga – and backed this up with words and data. Steffen Baumgart spoke in detail about...

...the squad situation: We’ll have to see day by day with Stephan Ambrosius, but he’ll definitely not be available at the weekend. All of the other players could be in the squad. Jean-Luc Dompe has been back in full team training for two days. That doesn’t automatically mean that I’m going to change things up though. Of course we know about his qualities, but he can also exhibit those if he comes on for 30 minutes. We’ll keep an open mind, monitor the situation and make a decision on Sunday. I definitely don’t want to permanently change the whole team around though. Matheo Raab will therefore remain in goal, as I thought he played well against Elversberg.

"Football is a contact sport – you need to embrace these duels and win them."

...VfL Osnabrück: I know their head coach Uwe Koschinat very well and I consequently know that his teams are always very physical and robust. Games against his teams are always very intense. Uwe works very meticulously and he detects the opposition’s weaknesses and is able to adapt his teams to these frailties. Additionally, Osnabrück are very good on the counter and play very directly because they also have pace in their team. Moreover, VfL have a special mentality – they’ve come from behind in a lot of games this season, they never give up and they’ll really test us.

...his approach to the game: We certainly need to stop talking about supposedly big or small teams in the league. VfL are bottom of the league, but they haven’t lost a game against the top three teams in the table and also have a very good record against the top eight. That’s because they are a very powerful and difficult opponent. We have to match that on the day. Football is a contact sport – you need to embrace these duels and win them. Following that, you can display your technical quality. Nevertheless, I expect us to win the game. We need to give our all and put in a good performance to achieve that. That means we need to be really aggressive out of possession, play out from the back in composed fashion and avoid making silly mistakes. We also need to demonstrate great quality in attack – we first need to score for a 30th consecutive game. If we manage all of that, then we’ve got a very good chance of winning this game.