If all the Hamburger SV coaches lined up, Ernst Happel would of course be at the front. Branko Zebec, Kuno Klötzer and Günter Mahlmann would follow at a little distance; they all left a nice estate in Hamburg that you can put in a well-stocked club museum. But after that it gets a bit wild: There are a few more big names in this series, all of which unfortunately carry the same stigma. They made their names and the HSV a little smaller, although it was never clear who was actually to blame – was it them or the HSV?
Somewhere at the end of this row a man has appeared who can look almost as grim as Ernst Happel, but whose trademark is not a cigarette in his mouth, but a flat cap on his head. You can say it like this: Coach Steffen Baumgart came to Hamburg to push his way forward a little. Champion and European Cup winning coaches appear in the confusingly long line, including some who are still Trainer were called. But HSV has never had a promotion coach. And it wasn’t needed for a long time because HSV and the second division only knew each other through hearsay and neither of them planned to turn it into a forced marriage that lasted at least six years.
Steffen Baumgart, 52, wants to achieve what no one before him has achieved. It seemed a bit like a homecoming when he sat at the front of the podium next to Hamburg’s sports director Jonas Boldt on Tuesday, because Baumgart said exactly the sentences that the audience and the Hamburg fans had hoped for from him: Baumgart spoke of a “dream “To be able to coach HSV – and thus confirmed what everyone already knows. As a child he always cheered for Hamburg, later as a professional striker he waited in vain for an offer that finally arrived in his role as a coach.
That sounded downright heartwarming, but of course this working group has nothing to do with sentimentality. “The promotion is the reason why I’m here,” said Baumgart with his infamous determination. At that moment he probably knew exactly that if he managed to complete this work assignment, it would be hard to avoid a rather sentimental promotion ceremony at Hamburg City Hall at the end of May.
HSV wouldn’t be HSV if this coaching staff had been introduced without any accidents.
What fits together emotionally also makes sense from other perspectives. A look into the archive proves that Baumgart is a double promotion coach because he coached SC Paderborn from the third to the second division and then directly into the first division. The archive also shows that Baumgart showed in his two and a half very successful years at 1. FC Köln that he can manage a traditional club. This is an irreplaceable core competency that cannot be learned at any academy – and which is asked about with an almost common frequency in Hamburg because small to medium-sized imponderables keep creeping into everyday life there, which can turn into huge industrial accidents.
That’s probably why it looks as if there is a hidden paragraph in the Hamburg club statutes that stipulates that this complicated, traditional club can only be successful if it is coached by tough guys. Baumgart’s predecessor Tim Walter was also rather rustic, but he was sometimes motivated by football ideology and was therefore unteachable in the long run. Of course, the new coach also knows about the risks and side effects involved in this task, but he also sees its potential: The squad is theoretically well composed and, for Baumgart, “clearly one of the best” in the second division. In practice, this squad has already played some excellent football games, but in retrospect they would look much better if there hadn’t been some confusing performances between them. Baumgart, who is also primarily forward-thinking, does not want to tear down Walter’s legacy, but rather adds an important detail: he wants to score one more goal than the opponent with great regularity – a not-so-secret secret of success that was rarely seen in Tim Walter’s final months in Hamburg the practice could be transferred.
But HSV wouldn’t be HSV if this coaching staff had been introduced without any accidents. Like that Hamburger Abendblatt reported that parts of the HSV supervisory board would have liked to install Felix Magath as sports director and trainer in one person just a few weeks ago; a demand that was probably trumpeted to the public by HSV investor Klaus-Michael Kühne, not exactly coincidentally. Those involved deny such overthrow plans to the SZ, but it seems clear that current sports director Jonas Boldt is facing more and more headwinds.
Four of Hamburg’s five non-promotions fell during his term in office – and it can be said that Boldt did not increase the chances this season when he stubbornly refused before Christmas to replace Walter with a coach who placed serious winning above all else football self-realization. Before Walter was released, he conceded a cool eight goals in two home games; Boldt only brought in a new coach after a test balloon with the young interim coach Merlin Polzin burst during the 2-2 draw in Rostock on Saturday. Baumgart still waited patiently for a call from Hamburg, but according to reports he was not the first candidate contacted by Boldt on Sunday evening. Nevertheless, questions remain: How much Boldt is in Baumgart – and why was the most obvious trainer for the industry apparently not immediately the most obvious coach for Boldt?
“I’m happy that Jonas has reached out,” said Baumgart, not resisting the smile that spread from the corners of his mouth. Baumgart didn’t reveal when Boldt got in touch, but both the coach and the sports director know: Nobody will ask anymore if Baumgart becomes the first promotion coach in the history of HSV.