Club

Merlin Polzin to remain as HSV’s head coach

Board member for sport Stefan Kuntz has shown full confidence in the coach: “We have clear arguments to continue our work together!”

A decision has been made. A day after the 5-0 home win over Greuther Fürth, board member for sport Stefan Kuntz, director of first-team football Claus Costa and interim coach Merlin Polzin sat down together for their scheduled end of year review. The result of that meeting is that Polzin will remain as the club’s head coach to continue the work he started around four weeks ago: “We’ve seen clear development during the four weeks of training, which we want to continue and build on in 2025. Merlin and his assistants have the team’s full confidence, as well as ours too. These are clear arguments for continuing our work together,” said Kuntz.

Stefan Kuntz (l.) and Claus Costa (r.) pose for a photo with Merlin Polzin.

Polzin, who took over as interim coach until the winter break on 24th November after Steffen Baumgart’s departure, has impressed the club’s bosses with his work and results. During his tenure, HSV have won two games and drawn the other two, averaging exactly two points per match. He will be in charge of preparations for the second half of the season, which start on 2nd January 2025, and will once again be supported by his assistants Loic Fave and Richard Krohn, as well as fitness coach Jan Hasenkamp (all from the club’s academy).

Polzin, who has impressed the club’s bosses with his ability to focus on each individual game as they come, is pleased with the faith shown in him and about the fact that he will continue in this role: “I extremely enjoy working with the team and my fellow staff members, I’ve always said that. Now we need to continue working on getting everyone familiar with our idea of playing football, which is based around an attacking style of play and defending as a unit,” said the 34-year-old, who, along with Fave, recently completed the UEFA Pro Licence course.

With Loic Fave remaining with the first team, the current setup in the U21s will stay the same. That means Soner Uysal will remain as head coach and Basil More-Chevalier his assistant. Fave will continue in his role as head of the academy.

The HSV players and staff were informed of the decision on Sunday afternoon. They will all be back together on 2nd January after the winter break. Kuntz and Polzin also agreed on Sunday that there will be a training camp at the start of January to get the Rothosen ready for the second half of the season.