Hamburg HSV decision
Continue with Coach Walter
Status: 22.12.2023 | Reading time: 3 minutes
Tim Walter, HSV coach, celebrates his team’s victory in Nuremberg.
Source: dpa
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Hamburger SV still lacks the right coordination in many game situations – the head coach has now received instructions from the club management. Tim Walter himself also sees “room for improvement”, but he also has to accept a personnel setback.
Four years ago, Tim Walter was fired by his then employer VfB Stuttgart right before Christmas – and it probably wouldn’t have taken much for him to do the same thing again four years later, this time as HSV coach. The number of points was too low and the performances of his team were too fickle, but at least they went into the winter break in third place in the table.
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Sports director Jonas Boldt and director of professional football Claus Costa took a few days to discuss the situation with Walter. This happened via internet sessions because the coach had already left to visit his family in Munich. The decision was made on Friday morning: Walter can therefore continue to try to stabilize the HSV game in the new year.
Boldt did not directly address the coaching question itself in a club statement, preferring to comment on the situation in general: “This analysis process was valuable for all of us. And it’s very good that we initiated it directly after the fresh impressions of the first half of the season, without letting ourselves be guided by emotions.” The result of the discussions and analyzes is a “plan agreed with various individual measures and concrete changes, which… Training should start in 2024.” Walter himself also said: “We still have room for improvement. We will go into winter preparation and especially the second half of the series with focus, a clear plan and new energy.”
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Boldt was unusually open about his criticism after the end of the first half of the season last week. Even if the Rothosen won the last game against 1. FC Nürnberg 2-0 – only 31 points and third place in the table would not meet their expectations. After all, there are top players, especially on offense, who can decide games on their own on good days. On the other hand, on bad days – as has happened more often recently – the entire team appears as organized as an open chicken coop.
Criticism of Walter’s game system
Above all, Walter’s game system is being pilloried, as he wants to implement offensive tactics but cannot eliminate defensive protection problems. The high defense was often unstable in the first half, which also had to do with personnel concerns after injuries and individual dropouts. Walter first had to verbally answer the questions about how he wanted to increase defensive stability, minimize opposing big chances and make the style of play more flexible. And the lack of penetration after set pieces such as corners also became an issue.
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In the next few weeks, the entire sporting HSV construct will likely be under the microscope. Boldt also made it clear that after two third places under Walter, promotion this year is a must – and that also applies to Boldt himself, who had always stood by Walter recently and now missed another chance for a personnel change. But there was some bad news for Walter before the festival: Captain Sebastian Schonlau, who was missing for large parts of the first half of the season, has injured his calf again and will be out for several weeks. Without him as chief strategist and first ball distributor, the statics in the game were shaky.
HSV now has to look for another central defender in the winter transfer period. Another personnel matter that needs urgent attention is Bakery Jatta. The highly gifted winger’s contract expires next summer. His advisors are demanding that the 25-year-old Gambian’s annual fixed salary of around 300,000 euros be doubled, but the club’s management is struggling with this.
HSV at least gets support from Hamburg’s mayor Peter Tschentscher. “The fall championship is not the decisive result of a season,” he said. “I continue to hope that either St. Pauli or HSV, or perhaps both, will take the chance to get promoted to the first division.”
