Team

HSV lose friendly against Aarhus GF

The Rothosen’s third friendly of the preseason ended in defeat, as Danish first division side Aarhus GF managed to come away with a 5-1 victory. Jatta scored HSV’s lone goal.

It was a disappointing outing for HSV on Friday afternoon, as they lost to Danish side Aarhus BK 5-1. It is the first time that the Rothosen have lost this preseason. HSV found it particularly hard in the first half of the game, while Aarhus were ruthless in capitalizing on their opponent’s mistakes. A stronger performance from Hamburg in the second half wasn’t enough to turn the game around in their favour. Bakery Jatta scored HSV’s only goal (49’).

New arrival Jairo Sampeiro played for 25 minutes in the friendly, just a day after arriving in Hamburg.

A game to learn from

HSV looked comfortable in the first few minutes, keeping a lot of possession and constantly looking to go forward. Aarhus remained defensively strong, however, and didn’t leave any gaps to be exploited. The team from the Danish Superliga kept up with their hosts from the very start and clearly showed that they would be no walkovers in this game. And it was indeed the Danes who made the most of their first big goalscoring chance. Jesper Juelsgaard was the man to do it, as he gave his side the lead with a pinpoint direct free-kick. The guests continued to benefit from a rash of mistakes from HSV in midfield. Kasper Junker utilised one such opportunity when he finished off a well-worked counter attack (19’). Julian Pollersbeck had no chance.

Hamburg were clearly caught off guard by their opponent’s attacking play and remained unable to break down their well organised formation in the minutes that followed. Only two half chances courtesy of Alexander Ivan and one from Lewis Holtby brought any sort of danger with them. A quick double from Jakob Ankersen before the break built on the lead (40’, 42’) and HSV went into the break 4-0 down and clearly second best.

Just like in the first two friendlies, Christian Titz changed his entire team to start the second half. The changes clearly had an effect. Very shortly after the break, a Lasogga chance was quickly followed up by HSV’s first goal courtesy of Bakery Jatta (49’). Josha Vagnoman was instrumental in the goal with some brilliant work down the left hand side. Titz’s side were clearly playing better than they had in the first half. While the visitors set themselves up quite deep, HSV continued to press forward and attempt to break them down, albeit without much success. Aarhus were successful at the other end, however, and added to their lead thanks to a penalty from Ankersen (72’).

HSV lacked much attacking creativity thereafter, and so the game would end 5-1. “The loss was obviously a fair result. We will analyse the performance and take what we need to and learn from our mistakes. We know that we have a lot of work left to do,” explained assistant coach Andre Kilian after the game.

HSV will head to Bad Erlach on Sunday to take part in a training camp (8th - 15th July). It will be an important time to work on what went wrong.