Merlin Polzin: “We want to go there full of confidence”

Hamburger SV away are at Karlsruher SC on Sunday for matchday 14 of the second division season. Hamburg-born Merlin Polzin is currently in charge in an interim role for the second time in his coaching career. At Friday afternoon’s press conference (29th November), the 34-year-old talked about training and the state of the team. He discussed in detail…

…the squad: The long-term injuries are already known. Both Ludovit Reis and Robert Glatzel are making progress and are helping us to maintain a good mood in camp right now. Davie Selke has a bit of a cold at the minute, but that shouldn’t be an issue for Sunday. We are taking things day by day regarding Jonas Meffert and his arm – we cannot yet be sure regarding this weekend’s match.

…the approach in training this week: We looked to focus on helping the lads believe in their own strengths again. It’s important for me to emphasise that the lads who haven’t got the results that we all wanted in recent weeks are the same lads that have managed to make this stadium sold out every week and have our fans travelling all around Germany to watch them play football. We want to get back to those levels. We added a lot of competitive elements to training. We want the boys to want to want to win in every possible moment. We also looked to improve the atmosphere around the place during training. We want people to enjoy working for HSV. It’s a special club for us all.

“Seeing how the lads have trained and how much we’ve enjoyed working together has given me a really positive feeling” 

...the approach for the game: I’m certain that we’ve got what it takes to win the game. We need to tinker with one or two things but seeing how the lads have trained and how much we’ve enjoyed working together has given me a really positive feeling. We want to find the right positions for all the players to get all the power and quality on the pitch that we’ve perhaps not had in the past. We won’t be looking to return to an old style of play, we’re just aiming to find a way of being successful. It will be a mix of everything – we obviously cannot perfectly adopt a different style of play within five days. We want to go there full of confidence and believe that we can win this tricky game. We’ll throw everything we’ve got at them.

...the opponents: We know what type of football Christian Eichner plays. KSC have so many different strengths. They are dangerous from crosses, have a quality strike partnership, a player like Marvin Wanitzek and a fantastic togetherness within their team too. We’ve got a clear plan as to how to attack them and how to defend. We need to play well from the first to the last minute if we want to get a good result.