Jan Siewert is currently nothing to envy. On the one hand, because during the international break in the Bundesliga, the man who has been training the Bundesliga club FSV Mainz 05 for three weeks “until further notice” had to delete two more regulars from the list of available players. According to the club, Karim Onisiwo will not be able to play again until December after an ankle injury suffered in the 0-0 draw in Darmstadt, while Maxim Leitsch will probably not be able to play again this year due to an unspecified thigh muscle injury. As if enough important Mainz players weren’t already left out.
On the other hand, Siewert is still in a situation where he can only win. If the team builds on its previous points tally (two games, four points) under his leadership in the next few games, his chances of being permanently appointed head coach will increase. Otherwise he could return to the U23s during the winter break.
“I’m just thinking about tomorrow.”
If what he answers to questions about his future is true, then he is not concerned with this topic. “I’m just thinking about tomorrow,” has become his standard sentence during the short time he has been in interim employment. And not just when it comes to his chances of remaining the real successor to Bo Svensson, who left at the beginning of November. But also after a game when he doesn’t want to talk about the planned training focuses for the next week.
The fact that a head coach doesn’t think beyond training replacement players and regeneration the following day is so banal that it’s hard to believe, but it fits with the overall very friendly but evasive manner that Siewert displays in the press conferences.
The 41-year-old may be deliberately keeping a low profile so as not to run the risk of saying something wrong. By lagging behind Svensson in terms of content on days when he was in a bad mood, Siewert is not raising his profile. He doesn’t necessarily have to do this to the public, as long as the team’s performance and results are right and sports director Christian Heidel and sports director Martin Schmidt are convinced of his work.
In fact, his restraint after the 2-0 win over RB Leipzig also seemed likeable. Bo Svensson had just been released at his own request following the cup defeat at Hertha BSC, Siewert only had one training session after the Dane’s tearful farewell to the team – and then there was a defensively convincing and then offensively impressive performance against the Champions League participant. The new man on the sidelines had every reason to be triumphant, but he was pleasantly modest.
Deliberately reserved: Jan Siewert : Image: dpa
How did he manage to “get into the heads of the players”? “I don’t know,” he said, and it didn’t seem like a conscious understatement. “The players played a very big part in it because we discussed together what a plan could look like.” That Siewert did not attribute the surprising success, Mainz’s first win of the season, to himself, but rather to “the team, the club and “Bo Svensson in particular” increased his popularity.
Sports director Schmidt certified that the coach, who played in the top league and later worked as a coach, especially in the youth ranks of the German Football Association and the Rhineland Football Association, but also worked for eight months at the Premier League club FC Huddersfield, had the best possible application letter. A day later, sports director Heidel spoke in the Sport 1 talk “Doppelpass” that sooner or later Siewert would definitely appear in the Bundesliga, “maybe with us”.
There was no sign of the mental block that had paralyzed the Mainz players’ legs for weeks in the Leipzig game. The team, which had appeared so insecure for a long time, no longer showed that they had not won any of the last 14 Bundesliga games and had only drawn four of them.
Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1 Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated: Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated:
The performance a week later in Darmstadt seemed all the more sobering. What the 05ers brought onto the pitch at the Böllenfalltor didn’t have much in common with the first game after Svensson and even more so with many of the last games under Svensson. Above all, Mainz owed their goalkeeper Robin Zentner and Darmstadt’s inability in the final phase to winning the point and keeping a clean sheet for the second time this season. Against a similarly limited opponent like VfL Bochum in the league with a 2-2 draw and second division representative Hertha BSC in the cup with a disastrous 0-3 draw. Jan Siewert contributed to this by putting Marco Richter on the bench, who had been moved into the starting line-up against RB and, with the energy he brought, was one of the most important players in the game. Instead, Ludovic Ajorque was allowed to play, who had been in poor form for months and had pitiful body language.
Siewert’s next chance to score points in two respects comes this Sunday evening (5.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on DAZN) at TSG Hoffenheim. It doesn’t get any easier. In addition to all the injured, Dominik Kohr and another central defender, Sepp van den Berg, are suspended.
