Hannover up next after historic Pokal victory

You would have to search long and hard through the HSV history books, spanning almost 137 years, in order to find a game of similar scale to the 7-1 victory at SV Meppen in the first round of the DFB-Pokal. Even before kick-off, the match had historical significance being the first ever meeting between the two sides and the scale of the Hamburg win only emphasised that fact.  In their 210th DFB-Pokal tie, HSV recorded their fourth-highest win, and biggest for around 44 years. In 1980, Hamburg won 11-1 in the first round of the DFB-Pokal against VfR Wormatia Worms, and then only a few months later, they defeated SG Rot-Weiss Frankfurt 11-0 in the third round of the competition. In 1939, there was an 11-2 victory against Polizei SV Hamburg in the Tschammer-Pokal, the predecessor to the current DFB-Pokal. However, the 7-1 triumph in Meppen did not only have historical implications with regard to the cup. In all competitive games, it was the biggest win for HSV in 16 years – on 17th May 2008, Hamburg defeated Karlsruher SC 7-0 on the final day of the Bundesliga season.

Next stop: Hannover

The Rothosen had a more than successful start to their 2024/25 DFB-Pokal campaign in Lower Saxony, and their next challenge will also take place in the second-largest German state. However, this time they will be travelling 200 kilometres east of Meppen to the state capital, Hannover. There, they will be taking on Hannover 96 in the third match of their Bundesliga 2 season (kick-off 18:30 CEST). Hannover are coming off the back of one of the only few cup upsets in this year’s DFB-Pokal first round, after falling to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of third-tier DSC Arminia Bielefeld. As a result, coach Steffen Baumgart’s side will need to be prepared for a very different game on Friday, against an opponent who is likely to come into the match with a lot of built-up frustration. They won their only home game of the season so far against newly-promoted SSV Jahn Regensburg (2-0).
In preparation for the upcoming battle between the two Northerners, Baumgart cancelled the team’s day off from training. Yesterday, those that didn’t feature for large parts of the Meppen game were back in training, while those that did completed some recovery work instead. The 52-year-old coach had his full squad in training at 11:00 CEST today. 21 outfield players and four goalkeepers attended the session on the training field by the Volksparkstadion, but five key, potential starting players were missing. Jean-Luc Dompe, Bakery Jatta and Daniel Elfadli are all injured, and Jonas Meffert and Sebastian Schonlau sat out of team training to manage their workloads. However, Dennis Hadzikadunic, Jonas David, Anssi Suhonen and Otto Stange, four players who weren’t in full training throughout the whole of last week, have all now returned to full training. Baumgart and his side have two more days of training before the next entry into the HSV chronicle. It doesn’t need to be such an historic one.