To Be a Rock

The pain goes on…

madcynic — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:52:20 +0000

Last sunday, 1. FC Magdeburg had its first home game of the season. Hopes were high that a win would be possible for the first time since March. These hopes couldn’t be dampened by thefact that the opposition was none other than former German champion (1912) Holstein Kiel, a team against whom Magdeburg had a less than favorable record of 1-1-2, although none of the home games had been lost. The way the team had presented itself versus Hannover hadn’t been too convincing, but it seemed to be good enough to see of the challenge of Kiel who had lost their first match.
Unfortunately though, things aren’t always what they seem and so in what was an abysmal performance, Magdeburg lost in front of about 11,000 infuriated spectators by an admittedly unlucky goal. Over the entire game, Magdeburg probably generated about 3 or 4 great opportunities, but none of them were converted. Next sunday the club play in Babelsberg, but I’m not exactly holding my breath…

Lineups
1. FC Magdeburg: Beer - Bankert, Prest, Probst, Neumann - Rosin (61′ Reimann), Racanel (83′ Siga), Gewelke, Dragusha (59′ Watzka) - Vujanovic, Braham

Holstein Kiel: Frech - Boy, Jürgensen (74′ Brückner), Schyrba, Rohwer - Hummel, Vujcic (82′ Schulz), Lartey, Nouri - Wulff (72′ Guscinas), Hoffmann

Scoring summary
53′ Lartey 0-1

Attendance
11,327

Aaaand we’re off

madcynic — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:10:45 +0000

Last Saturday, the waiting period was finally over. More than two months after missing out on qualifying for the new 3rd Liga, 1. FC Magdeburg had their first competitive game. The mission for this season couldn’t be simpler: Come in first and win promotion. In order to achieve that, Paul Linz has brought in 11 new players, a number of whom have already played under him when he was manager of Eintracht Trier. Magdeburg have a completely new midfield, with Catalin Racanel, Mehmet Dragusha, Daniel Rosin and Maximilian Watzka having competed in Bundesliga 2. Essentially, everyone got the feeling that - Florian Müller aside - this new team was even better than the one Magdeburg had last season, despite now playing one tier lower.
Magdeburg’s first opposition were the reserve team of Bundesliga outfit Hannover 96. The reserves had had a rather good preseason, beating VfB Lübeck and Hessen Kassel and looking generally lively. In front of roughly 4,000 spectators in Hannover’s world cup venue AWD-arena, however, they were rather harmless. Magdeburg tried to get into the game by playing good combinations on both flanks, but didn’t manage to get a goal in, until the 38th minute, when Braham scored off a Racanel freekick. With just seconds on the clock, Braham missed an absolute sitter and the teams went into the dressing rooms with just one goal separating them.
For the second half, Hannover had lost one of their best midfielders to injury, first teamer Chavdar Yankov had to be subbed out just before half-time. The second half then saw Magdeburg controlling and dominating the game, but again the team had issues with converting their opportunities. In the 56th, however, Braham was fouled again, Racanel stepped up to the freekick - again - and scored. Magdeburg now led comfortably and didn’t do too much to increase their lead.
Overall, a deserved victory for Magdeburg in a match against an opponent whose only opportunity at scoring came after one of goalkeeper Christian Beer’s traditional mistakes. He left his goal to try and catch a corner kick, but missed. Still a decent start into the league and the first three points on the way to winning the title, hopefully.
mdr has a match report here.

Lineups:
Hannover 96 II: Jensen - Balogun, Ibelherr, Hofmann, Rausch - Hahne, Bikmaz, Herrmann, Yankov (44′ Moslehe) - Proschwitz (78′ Büchler), Ghasemi-Nobakht (78′ Lindner)
1. FC Magdeburg: Beer - Neumann, Bankert, Prest, Probst - Rosin (66′ Watzka) - Gewelke, Racanel, Dragusha (79′ Matthias) - Vujanovic (73′ Reimann), Braham
Scoring summary:
40′ Braham 0-1
56′ Racanel 0-2
Attendance:
4,000 (~3,700 from Magdeburg)

Meaningless friendly™

madcynic — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:29:35 +0000

On Saturday, Magdeburg suffered a 2-4 defeat at the hands of what can be called an A2-Team of Hertha BSC. Overall, it was an even match, only at the end did Magdeburg not pay enough attention in defense, and thus Hertha scored 2 goals in the last 5 minutes of the match.
An audience of 6,277 was well entertained though, and large parts of the match created some hope for the coming season. Still three weeks to go till the start of the new season. Magdeburg will face Hanover 96’s reserve team in Hanover.

Rebuilding

madcynic — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:30:52 +0000

May 31, 3:15 pm: 1. FC Magdeburg are relegated from tier III. Or do not qualify for the new 3rd Liga, whichever you prefer. This means that with the exception of Reimann, all players’ contracts will run out on June 30, as they are not valid for tier IV. The same goes for manager Paul Linz.
Captain Mario Kallnik announces his retirement. He’ll take over an as yet undefined function with the club.
June 1: The board promise the team will be rebuilt within three weeks. A team strong enough to compete for promotion from the Regionalliga Nord is needed. Linz says he’ll stay if the team is competitive.
June 3: On the last fan meeting of the season, manager Linz announces his plans for the next season. He’ll continue using a 4-4-2, but considers a diamond in midfield. Although nothing is confirmed, it is clear that Linz will stay.
June 4: At a press conference, the club announce a number of things. Linz has signed a two year contract, the goal being promotion to 3rd Liga within this time, possibly earlier. Magdeburg sign Daniel Rosin, a defender and defensive midfielder from Wacker Burghausen. The player had been on the list of players for the 3rd Liga team Paul Linz had written up, but will join the club despite the relegation to tier IV. He has received a 3-year contract. Matthias von der Weth leaves Magdeburg for Borussia Mönchengladbach’s reserves.
Also on June 4, 2nd Bundesliga side Alemannia Aachen announce that they have signed Florian Müller from 1. FC Magdeburg. The right midfielder had been one of the few bright spots for Magdeburg in the past season.
June 5: Najeh Braham signs a new contract that will keep him at the club until 2011. He says he feels good in Magdeburg and wants to help them reach the 3rd Liga.
June 6: Goalkeeper Christian Beer, defender Christian Prest and defender/midfielder Stephan Neumann sign new contracts. Beer receives a 3-year contract, Prest and Neumann signed until 2010. All three are from the club’s youth system and have played for the club since, with the exception of the 2002/03 season.
June 9: Magdeburg sign Catalin Racanel from FC Sachsen Leipzig. The Romanian-born midfielder receives a 2-year contract. 31-year-old Racanel has worked with manager Paul Linz in the 2nd Bundesliga in Trier and Ahlen. “Linz is the best manager I’ve ever had”, he says when asked for the reason he’ll spend more time in tier IV footie. Racanel has played 7 Bundesliga, 100 2nd Bundesliga and 34 Regionalliga matches.
June 10: Magdeburg announce that Mats Wejsfelt and Pit Grundmann have signed new one-year contracts. Both are defenders and play a central role in Paul Linz’s planning. Says he: “It’s important to keep last year’s defense together, as you need to be well-established in that department.
In other news, Marcel Brendel, a versatile attacking player from FC Schalke 04’s reserves joins the club. The 20-year old from Berlin has signed a two-year contract.

To be continued…

It’s over

madcynic — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:43:32 +0000

Not only is the season at its end, but also the time 1. FC Magdeburg spends in tier III of German football. Thanks to yet another league reform the 11th place is not enough to stay up, and Magdeburg will have to play in the then-tier IV Regionalliga Nord come next season.
How could a club that finished 3rd last season play this badly, you ask? As usual the answer to that question is rather complex. One factor, and basically speaking the factor that led to this miserable result is the 3rd place from the last season. A lot of people assumed that the team achieved this rank because of its inherent qualities, and unfortunately, members of the Magdeburg board and at least in part the manager were among those people. This has led to only very inadequate players coming in, such as Eric Agyemang and Dennis Tornieporth, both of which were unable to fulfill the expectations. Also, the club was not able to compensate for the loss of forward Aleksandar Kotuljac who went to Greuter Fürth (and has established himself rather well in the 2nd Bundesliga) and even Sven Kubis was missed by some. These two issues, the overconfidence in the strength of the team and the fact that as a consequence no new players that could increase that quality (an exception is, of course, Florian Müller who had a brilliant season) were signed are the origin of all problems that the club has had in this season.
From these issues arose another. Manager Dirk Heyne was soon obviously helpless and clueless with regard to the problems that the team had, but instead of sacking him at the end of the first half of the season, the board let him stay on for the first two matches of the second half as well, maybe because they thought that after beating Wuppertal in November things would get better, but I suspect that the actual reasons are Heyne’s merits with the club (having played as goalkeeper for more than 20 years and winning promotion to Regionalliga) and the fact that Heyne’s father had died only recently. Both factors are not actual reasons not to sack a manager, in fact this decision might be what cost us the league.
The next two matches were a disaster, points-wise: Magdeburg drew Werder Bremen U23 at home and lost to Energie Cottbus U23 away. Then Heyne was gone. I wonder if a prompter reaction by the board might have changed things, but it’s no use crying over spilt milk now.
Heyne’s reign ended with a terrible record: Of the 20 matches that the club played, they won merely 6, drew another 6 and lost 8. Only 1 away match was won and the goal record was equally abysmal: 19 goals, but 24 conceded.
As a successor, Magdeburg brought in Paul Linz, and finally the board signed players that could potentially help us: Tunisian forward Najeh Braham, Christian Reimann who came with the recommendation of 48 goals in 68 matches, albeit in tier IV, and Steffen Baumgart, an experienced former Bundesliga player and allrounder. In the test matches things looked good and a confident performance in the first match after the winter break spread a careful optimism, when Magdeburg beat Hamburger SV U23 2-0. But the away game at Dresden showed the old troubles again, the team looked scared, ran scared - and they played that way too, much to the chagrin of their manager. He had been trying to instill a hunger for attacking football into them, but that was not easy, after years of playing a 3-5-2 under Dirk Heyne, which most of the time turned into a 5-3-2 or rather 5-5-0.
The next home opposition was minnows Verl and Magdeburg fulfilled their task, beating them 2-0 again. But that was that. Curiously enough, Magdeburg began to win away games, even those that were highly unlikely, such as the ones in Düsseldorf or Berlin. However, this came at a price, as it seems, because since the Verl game, Magdeburg have not been able to win at home. None of these draws and even the loss against Essen on the penultimate matchday were of such a nature that you could have blamed the team. It’s just bad luck if you hit the bar twice in one game…it just wasn’t meant to be.
After yesterdays 2-1 away win at Wuppertal, the club were relegated on goal difference, showing that the management’s and the board’s failure to correctly identify weaknesses in the team was fatal in this season. However, in the new 18-team Regionalliga Nord, Magdeburg will have to try for immediate promotion. If they do not, they run the risk of losing much of their attendance (last season had the highest average attendance since 1983/84, with 11.800 spectators per game) and also their manager. Paul Linz’s contract runs out in June as the club did not qualify for the 3rd Liga. However, he is willing to stay if he gets a competitive team. The budget for next season is rumored to be 3 million euros. One should be able to do something with that.

Regionalliga Nord will start on August 16th, a lot of time to look for and sign new, talented and good players that can help put 1. FC Magdeburg back where they belong: Into a professional league.