Latest news with #2.Bundesliga
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bayer Leverkusen prospect Francis receives loan out to Bochum
The 18-year-old who became Bayer Leverkusen's eighth youngest professional this year will receive a chance to hone his skills in the 2. Bundesliga next season. Germany U18 international Francis Onyeka received a contract extension (through 2028) and loan out to VfL Bochum on Tuesday. Onyeka made two first-team appearances with Leverkusen this season in the DFB Pokal and Champions League. The versatile attacker – who has proven himself capable of playing at the six, eight, and ten positions – won the Fritz Walter Medal as the greatest talent in the DFB's U-17 division after 2023/24 season. He reached the final of the German A-Junior Championship with Leverkusen's U19 team this year. Advertisement 'Francis Onyeka has developed into an outstanding player in Bayer 04's youth ranks in recent years,' Leverkusen sporting director Simon Rolfes noted in a club statement. 'He will continue to improve in Bochum through regular appearances at a high level. VfL gets a great talent who can then make the step up to a player with excellent opportunities at Bayer 04.' '[Onyeka is] one of the most talented players of his age group in Germany and has had an exceptional season,' Bochum sporting director Dirk Dufner added in his own statement. 'His technical skills and attacking instincts caught our attention, especially as he has already been able to acclimate to a high training level and playing with the pros and has also taken on responsibility as captain of the U19 team.' 'I've always been impressed by the atmosphere [in Bochum],' Onyeka himself said. 'I hope I can convince and get as much playing time as possible. The 2. Bundesliga is physically demanding and it will be a real challenge.' GGFN | Peter Weis
Glasgow Times
5 days ago
- Sport
- Glasgow Times
Rangers 'working on' first signing as Almamy Toure targeted
On Friday, the Ibrox club confirmed their US takeover had gone through as they heralded in a new era. And the first signing of the regime could be a defender on a free transfer. Centre-back Almamy Toure is a free agent after leaving side Kaiserslautern and Africa Foot say Rangers have already started work on attempting to lure him to Glasgow. Read more: Inside Russell Martin's 'brilliant' Rangers interview as BBC pundit reveals all Tottenham confirm exit of former Celtic star Fraser Forster The 29-year-old can play at centre half or right-back and was highly-rated as he came through at Monaco along with the likes of Kylian Mbappe. He signed for Eintracht Frankfurt and won the Europa League in 2022, beating Rangers on penalties in Seville. It is claimed his wage was at Kaiserslautern was £8,000 a week, making him very attainabe.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
🇩🇪 Bundesliga's smallest-ever play-off starts Thursday, all you need to know
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here. The Bundesliga 24/25 playoff, between Heidenheim and Evelsberg, will decide the last participant of the next season of the German elite. And you can follow everything, LIVE and FREE, here on !If you don't remember very well how the Relegation works (for the Germans), we'll explain! The 16th place in the BuLi faces the 3rd place in the to decide if we will have three clubs relegated in the First Division - or three promotions - next season. Of the 26 playoffs in the history of German football, 20 were won by the elite team, 77%, according to Bundesliga information. In the cut of the last 12 playoffs, 11 were won by the team trying to avoid relegation - which makes Heidenheim the favorite in the match, at least, on the side of the statistics. Heidenheim, with about 50,000 inhabitants, facing Elversberg, with 13,000, represents the "smallest" playoff of all time. For an idea, last season's playoff, between Bochum and Fortuna Düsseldorf, opposed cities with 372,000 people and 613,000, respectively. In 2022/23, Stuttgart, with 632,000 inhabitants, escaped relegation against HSV, from Hamburg - the second largest city in Germany, with 1.85 million. If Elversberg achieves promotion, it will become the smallest team in history to compete in the Bundesliga, being the 59th different club to participate in the German football elite. They [Heidenheim] have assembled a quality squad that can play in the Bundesliga and the Conference League. They are very flexible and can change during the phases of the game... We will do our best to influence the match with our performance and then we have to hope that the opponent may not be so connected, so that we can take advantage of it. Elversberg has been on a journey to get to this chance to make history. In the 2021/22 season, the club was in the Southwest Regionalliga - the fourth division of German football -, and this is only its second season in the The team led by Horst Steffen scored 58 points in 34 games, finishing just one point behind the runner-up Hamburg, which went up directly, alongside the champion Cologne. They scored 64 goals, less only than Cologne, and had the best defense in the Second Division, with 37 conceded. Only striker Fisnik Asllani scored 18 goals, finishing on the podium of the top scorers, behind Martijn Kaars (19), from Magdeburg, and Davie Selke (22), from HSV. Heidenheim and Elversberg have only faced each other twice in history, in the 3. Liga of 2013/14. Heidenheim won once, by 1 x 0, with a draw, at 1 x 1, in the other game of the season. Frank Schmidt, coach of Heidenheim, Horst Steffen, praised his rival this Thursday, in a recent interview. For me, [Steffen] is the coach of the year. When I see what he achieved with Elversberg, how he managed to assemble a team that plays such successful football. I have great respect for him. That's why I'm also looking forward to this confrontation, because we can show that we can assert ourselves against them. Heidenheim surprised in the Bundesliga, less than a year ago, when it debuted in the German elite, finishing in eighth place, with a spot in the Uefa Conference League playoffs. The dispute in the European competition, however, had a cost in the performance in the Bundesliga. The club flirted with relegation for much of the season, and needed a surge, already at the end, to secure the playoff. So, who will be present in the Bundesliga 2025/26? 📸 Christian Kaspar-Bartke - 2025 Getty Images
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
1. FC Köln will sack Gerhard Struber
Despite sitting second and three points clear of third, FC Köln will part ways with head coach Gerhard Struber and sporting director Christian Keller, according to . Die Geißböcke have won just one of their last five league games and have lost top spot in the 2. Bundesliga to Hamburg following their 1-1 draw against bottom club Jahn Regensburg on Saturday night. With games against Nürnberg and Kaiserslautern to end their season and HSV, Elversberg and Paderborn all winning, Effzeh have made the decision. This comes following a crisis meeting after the draw against Regensburg. Kölnische Rundschau further report that the team has been involved, and all that is pending is an official confirmation. According to , Friedhelm Funkel (71) is the favourite to take charge of the remaining two games of the season. He has managed to help six teams get promoted to the Bundesliga. GGFN | Daniel Pinder
New York Times
10-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Hamburg, a Bundesliga giant almost back from brink – led by a cast of unlikely characters
Spring brings relief in Hamburg. The cold thaws, the hats and gloves are put away, and the sun emerges, bright and fresh, ready to dance on the harbour water. But for Hamburger SV, the city's biggest football club, the end of winter usually brings a collapse in form, and a bitter end to another attempt to win promotion back to the Bundesliga. Advertisement The last seven years have been humiliating. HSV are a six-time national champion, they won the European Cup in 1983 and play in front of 57,000 fans at home, every single game. And yet six times they have tried to climb out of the since their relegation in 2018 and six times they have failed. Twice they have finished third and been beaten in a relegation play-off. Four times they have finished fourth. Nearly every season starts strongly in autumn and winter, teases promotion, before all that promise melts away in the spring sun. It's not just that HSV play badly when it matters. Their failures are often cloaked in dark comedy. In 2023, they had one foot back in the Bundesliga only for Heidenheim to score twice in an 11-minute stoppage time and slam the door in their face. In 2022, they built a 1-0 lead in the first leg of their play-off with Hertha Berlin, only then to be beaten 2-0 back in Hamburg. That was an awful, funereal night, made worse by the fact that Hertha were coached by Felix Magath, who scored HSV's winning goal in that 1983 European Cup win. And last season, because the universe wanted to mock HSV one more time, the other Hamburg club, won promotion to the Bundesliga as champions of the despite a fraction of the budget. But 2025 might be different. On Saturday night, HSV beat Fortuna Dusseldorf 4-1 at the Volksparkstadion. It is one of the great destinations of German football and it produced another fabulous night, full of fluent football and goals, played in a thumping, febrile atmosphere. By full time, HSV had maintained their one-point lead at the top of a hopelessly tight division and, with nine games to go, the Bundesliga is almost in reach. The irony is that HSV are being led up the mountain by a cast of unlikely characters — by a free-transfer centre-forward who the game had given up on and a 34-year-old head coach without any prior full-time experience. Between 2018 and 2024, the years following relegation, HSV employed eight different coaches. Among them were idealists and pragmatists, technocrats and traditionalists. Nothing has worked. When Steffen Baumgart, the most recent, was sacked in November 2024, he was replaced on an interim basis by Merlin Polzin. Advertisement Polzin was born in Hamburg and grew up an HSV fan. Coincidentally, the coach he defeated on Saturday night, Daniel Thioune, is not only one of his predecessors, but also the man responsible for setting his career's path. In 2014, Thioune was coaching Osnabruck's under-17 side and appointed Polzin as his assistant. Six years later, when Thioune had built his own reputation to the point of being appointed head coach at HSV, he brought Polzin along as his assistant — and he has been there since. But for the pencil moustache of a 1920s aristocrat, Polzin would look a decade younger than he really is. He was never a coaching prodigy and despite serving as a brief interim after Tim Walter was dismissed in February 2024, there was no sense of HSV sitting on any sort of saviour when Baumgart departed and he reprised the role. The assumption had always been that the club needed someone strong — a name, a personality. By contrast, Polzin is unproven and quiet. Those who know him describe a studious, fiercely intelligent and conciliatory character. The results, from someone presumed antithetical to everything HSV were believed to need, have been excellent. When Polzin inherited the side, they were in seventh place, had just 20 points from 13 games, and were winless in five matches. Since he took control — and earned the job permanently — they have lost once in four months, during which individually and collectively, the team has looked its healthiest in years. Jean-Luc Dompe, an absurdly gifted but maddeningly mercurial French winger, is a consistent threat. Ludovit Reis, whose form and fitness has been tenuous for much of the last year, looks again like a player with a Bundesliga future. And HSV are balanced with the ball and far more secure without it. Last weekend in Paderborn, they lost badly, the home side winning 2-0. It was Polzin's first loss and a dispiriting one, but the win over Fortuna was a comprehensive response. HSV took the lead with a thunderbolt from full-back Miro Muheim. Dawid Kownacki then equalised later in the first half, before Davie Selke headed the hosts back into a lead that they would never lose. Advertisement And Selke, 30, is as unlikely a story as Polzin. He moved to HSV on a free transfer in the summer 2024, having made more than 200 Bundesliga appearances for Werder Bremen, RB Leipzig, Hertha Berlin and Koln, but without ever scoring more than 10 goals in a league season, nor living up to the promise that made him a regular in Germany's international youth teams. When he arrived, it was just to provide back-up to Robert Glatzel, who has consistently scored goals at level and was presumed integral to any hope of promotion. So much so that when Glatzel suffered a ruptured tendon in his hip during an October friendly, the season's trajectory seemed to change. Glatzel has not played since and the season did change — eventually for the better. Selke, who averaged roughly one goal every five Bundesliga games, has 14 from 17 starts in the second division. To emphasise just how unforeseen this form has been, it's worth recalling a story from his time at Werder Bremen. In 2020-21, Selke was on loan at the Weserstadion and scored three goals all season as Werder were relegated. According to a mean-spirited meme of the time, some of the resulting disappointment was dampened, however, by freeing the club from their obligation to make Selke's move permanent for €12m. That's how Selke was perceived. Four years later, he is in the right place at the right time, fulfilling a role that nobody imagined. In February he scored both goals — including a last-minute penalty — in a 2-1 win away at Prussen Munster, a 90th-minute equaliser in Regensburg, and his team's first two goals in a 3-0 win over Kaiserslautern. Without Selke's goals, there would be no hope. A fierce competitor who adores the physical aspect of the game and must be horrible to play against, Selke is a force — always cajoling, challenging and holding his team-mates to account. He broke his cheekbone in January and has been wearing a face mask since. Rather than disrupt his form, it seems to have made him better — more menacing, more determined, even more onerous to mark. Advertisement And nobody is more popular. When Selke scored his goal on Saturday and dropped to his knees, the stadium announcer howled his name out across the tannoy and the stadium boomed it back with shuddering volume. A goalscorer and a leader. In stoppage time, 18-year-old academy prospect Otto Stange scored to make it 4-1. Selke had been substituted by then, but raced down the touchline to celebrate with his young team-mate, wrapping him in a bear hug and kissing his cheek. A post shared by Seb Stafford-Bloor (@sebstaffordbloor) He has seen the good and the bad in the game. He knows what it is to bask in its adulation, but to feel its crueler, colder side too. Someone of that experience is valuable to HSV, because not every player is equipped to cope with the challenge of the club's situation. The down years have created a lot of bad memories and many of this squad have lived through the disappointments of recent seasons. The result is a neurosis that is never far from the surface and a fragility that teams in the enjoy trying to expose. A lot of knees have buckled. But Selke has become part of the resistance to that. This is probably his last chance with a major club and the urgency with which he has embraced that challenge suggests he understands that. But his tangible spirit has become something important; it has perpetuated a healthy rage which has replaced the usual weakness. If they do go up, it will be impossible to separate him from that achievement — and six months ago, that would have been a ridiculous situation to imagine. Nobody wants to speak about that yet. The nine remaining games might as well be 100. Repeated failure has bred paranoia in Hamburg and the fear that just talking about promotion will somehow scare it away. But the sun is up, the cold has gone, and — still — HSV are keeping their feet.
