[FM24] The Hamburg team with unusual kits and a strong left wing support. No, not St. Pauli, the other one.

[Reiver]

 

When Altonaer Fußball-Club von 1893 was founded in (you guessed it) 1893, Altona was its own city, right to the west of Hamburg; less than 30 years earlier, it was actually part of Schleswig-Holstein-Glückstadt, which was ruled by the Kings of Denmark, which explains the team's nickname of "Die Dänen" and the nordic flags with the teams colours often seen in their games.

Altona 93 was a very important part of the beginning of organised football in Germany: founding members of the Hamburg football league (then the Hamburg-Altona league); founding member of the Deutscher Fußball-Bund (and the first club on the list of clubs that were part its creation); and the first German championship final (back then a cup competition played by the winner of each regional league) was played at their stadium, and refereed by a member of the club. Before WWI, despite having some players play for the national team and several Hamburg-Altona league wins, the best they managed was the semi finals in 1903 and 1909, and the quarter finals in 1914. In between the two wars it was still a top division team in the German Northwest, and after WWII  the team started strong, quickly reaching and playing in the Oberliga Nord, the highest regional league at the time, finishing third a few times and reaching the semifinals of the German cup in 1955. At this point, Altona and Hamburg had already merged, and now Altona was the westernmost district of the city, and this decade saw crowds of nearly 30000 people at their stadium for the city derbies against HSV. Slowly though, the club started to decline, spending most of the 60s in the second tier, then the 70s yo-yoing between the 3rd and 4th tier, and from the onwards they were never higher than the 3rd tier again, spending the last 20 years between the 4th and 5th tier and German football.  

So that's one third of the save title explained. Let's go for the second half - the team's main kit classic design, which they've used since the team started [Here's a picture of the team from 1897], is so unusual that you can't replicate in FM: hoops, alternating between red, black and white. They also have good relations and try to play a friendly as often as possible against another team with an unusual kit: Dulwich Hamlet F.C.

 

Now for the third point. At their peak, Altona had average attendances of over 10000 people, now after decades in the lower leagues, their attendances are now in the higher hundreds, lower 1k range. What these fans lack in numbers, they win in passion and attitude. Two groups in particular: former (and current) St. Pauli fans unhappy with the level of commercialization the club had to get to to compete at the level they're at; and then the punks that live in local trailer parks away from society, that even have their own manual scoreboard that they man during games.

Going back to the team, they play at the Adolf-Jäger-Kampfbahn, one of the oldest stadium in Germany, opened in 1908, which currently has a covered stand that seats 1400, and three terraced standing sides, which adds capacity for 8000 more; in most games not all of the terraced areas are open nowadays. The game is named after Adolf Jäger, arguably the best player ever in an Altona shirt; he played from 1907–1927 for the club, and had 11 goals out of 18 caps for Germany (in a time where there were significantly less international games, and in a career interrupted by WWI). Legend has it (and partly supported by old newspaper clippings] that counting local leagues and amateur games, he had over 2000 career goals out of 700 games. He was described by managers and players of the time as “one of the greatest geniuses of German football and the creator of the modern combination game” and I've also read him being described as one of the first if not the first proper number 10 of the game. Die Tageszeitung, a german newspaper, included him in Germany's team of the century. Other players that have been through the ranks of Altona, albeit in their youth are Christian Rahn, Jonathan Tah and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting.

This takes us to how they are in-game. We are currently part of Oberliga Hamburg- a division composed of teams from Hamburg and its outskirts: see the map. It's a 18 team division, with 4 teams getting relegated each season, and the top team will get promoted to... yeah that would be to easy! At the end of the season, there's a promotion stage played by the winners of Oberliga Hamburg, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein, and the top two will get promoted. So winning the league might not be enough to get promoted. We also play in the local cup, the Verbandspokal Hamburg, and winning that will give a spot in next year's German cup.

Now for the squad:

With this squad and our reputation, we are expected to go up, and the media predicts us to finish second. I mean, I have decent players for this level, but god i need more defenders, that is simply not enough, and the game starts a week and a half before our first game. Time to rummage through players! 

A quick note too, despite being in the 5th tier, we will play against a couple of decently known players! TuS Dassendorf has 68 times capped for Austria Martin Harnik playing for them at age 36; and 42 year old Daniel Brückner, now at Niendorfer TSV, has 1 Bundesliga and 7 2.Bundesliga years on his CV.

 

 

 

 

 

[Reiver]

 

Now that I've had time to look at the squad, I can say a bit more than the obvious "we need defenders". Looking at the stats, we have higher than average Strength, Passing, First Touch, Determination, Positioning, Concentration and Decisions for the league, as well as having flat out the fastest team in the whole division. So for now we are going for a high press approach (come on, "Gegenpress" is even a German word, it's like I have to use it). the current formation we're using looks roughly like this, with a few changes in roles depending on who's fit and available.

 

There's a few stand out players already at the team:

• Michael Ambrosius, who joined Altona last season after spending pretty much all his career on St. Pauli's II team is the boss or our backline. I wish he was slightly stronger but for this level of football most of his defensive stats are great, specially his speed, which rivals the best attackers at this level.
• Ezra Ampofo, a new arrival from St. Pauli, albeit from their youth team, is a bullet on our left side, He excels at running, dribbling and crossing, just what we need from an old-school winger.
• Gianluca Przondziono, with a name that can't decide if it wants to be Italian or Polish, is the son of Martin Przondziono who played in the 90s for Nürnberg and Fürth amongst others, And came into the club this season after a couple of seasons at other local clubs. He'll be mainly playing from an AM position as a shadow striker.
• Bujar Sejdija, is the boss of the team, and its captain. His passing might not be the best, but he makes up for it with his Decisions and physicality.

I still had the big gaps in defense though, and literally a week and a half to find decent players, and as I wanted the game to feel realistic, I offered trials to a bunch of unattached players that were either a) born in Hamburg or b) last played for an Hamburg club, with special emphasis on players that had come from HSV or St Pauli's youth ranks. I also had the secondary hurdle of not really having space in the wage budget (we're semi-pro) to add any player that asked for any amount of money... Surprisingly, while this meant I couldn't attract any player that would immediately go to the list of game-changers I made just now, I could still attract a few players good enough to be regular squad members who were willing to join for amateur contracts, sdo that's the angle I went for. So, to bolster our defense we hired:

• Miguel Plaza, a poor man's Ambrosius, a pacy cover defender that last played for HSV's youth team;
• Gerrit Pressel, a 33 year old balanced left back, with a very long history of playing for Hamburg teams, and 6 games in the Eredivisie (in 2010/11 for Willem II).
• Erik Gehlen, another pacy defender, and the player that came from further away, from the youth ranks of Paderborn.
• Benjamin Safo-Mensah, now a case of a known player returning, as the 27 year old played for Altona from 2019 to 2022.

With the defense settled, I originally thought that the team was set; then I had a couple of month long injuries on players that play for the 3 attacking midfield positions, and suddenly I was low on options there, just a week before the registration deadline. Our goal was the same here - we don't have the budget for any stand-out player, but we can bolster our number with decent options, and we brought in 3 more players - this time one on loan too:

• Sidnei Baldé Djaló, another player signing their first first team contract, after being in the youth ranks of St. Pauli and Wolfsburg, giving us one more decent option at AMC and L;
• Selmin Đogić, a bosnian playing in Hamburg teams since 2019, but that before that was a regular squad member at teams in the top Bosnian league, who can play on both wings;
• Jonatan Rindom, taking advantage of our relative proximity to Denmark, we brought Jonatan on loan from Hillerod in the Danish second division. Mor than anything, he gives us versatility , as he can play anywhere from midfield forwards, on any area of the field.

Oberliga Hamburg 2023/24 End of September

 

Still early times in the competition but we are showing that we are one of the favourites going up. Started with an important win against ETSV, one of the other promotion candidates, followed by three very easy wins, then Przondziono got injured for a month and the team just doesn't operate the same way without him - going from 3-0 to 3-2 against Halstenbek, then drawing against HEBC and losing against Sasel, two games where we were the best team in all indicators except goals... At least he is just a few days away from being back in training and I hope we can go back to the form we had before he sprained his ankle ligaments. The big challenge here will be Dassendorf, because they have Martin Harnik. To give you an idea of how dominating he can be,. he currently sits at 14 goals in 8 games, and has 91 goals in 62 games even since he joined them. Not the kin of player you want to go against.

 

Verbandspokal Hamburg

just the one game so far, against fellow Oberliga Hamburg side Sasel, where unlike the league game we easily won. Next game is now in November against Barsbütteler SV, a team currently 2 divisions below us, so I expect to make it through at least one more round.

[Shrewnaldo]

Nice one Reiver, really interesting choice of club.

Loving that Martin Harnik is in your league, even if not at your club. Much nostalgia for me

[Carambau]

Nice club! Gonna follow that  

[Reiver]

On 19/12/2023 at 07:58, Shrewnaldo said:

Nice one Reiver, really interesting choice of club.

Loving that Martin Harnik is in your league, even if not at your club. Much nostalgia for me

I am not so happy with him being in the league, as you'll see. At this level the man is a goal making machine, and is averaging over one goal per game.

[Reiver]

Oberliga Hamburg 2023/24 Winter Break

Two more stumbles and we are now 8 points behind Dassendorf. At least this time we stumbled against the other teams fighting for promotion, so theoretical stronger teams (unlike HEBC in the previous month). Other than those games, where the results were fair this time - the game against Niendorf was very close, and while we ended the game against Dassendorf ended up with us having a higher xG, we ended with exactly the same possession and shots, so this time the luck of the game went their way. All the other games were, to be honest, a cakewalk; at this level there is a big gap between the top and bottom teams of the league. Another chance was that our original first choice striker, Rasmus Tobinski, who had 5 goals in 10 games got a calf strain and was out for 5 weeks, and lost his spot, because his replacement, Lenny Glissmann, is currently on 11 goals from 9 games, a much better output.

I need to highlight Martin Harnik's output too, because half of Dassendorf's success comes from the fact that in the first 19 games of the season he has scored 30 goals and assisted on a further 5, with his striker partner Tom Bertelsmann scoring a further 15 goals. It's not impossible to fight back and catch up, but it's starting to be an uphill battle.

 

Verbandspokal Hamburg

In the local cup, we are experiencing a different level of success. Firstly, an easy 2-0 win away against a team two divisions below us gave us what I believe was a "poisoned gift" in a draw against Eimsbüttel, who play in the league above us. That is, until I looked further on them in preparation for the game; they are 17th in the league, second to last with just 12 points and a goal difference of -28... I thought we might have a shot and ended up not even changing our gameplan against them. And it's a good thing I didn't - we controlled the game and easily neutralised them: we had 9 shots against their 6, but 1.8 xG against their 0.2. And what did the draw gift us this time? ... Dassendorf.

 

In other news, we're likely to lose our Playmaker in the winter transfer season; Bujar Sejdida is seeing insterest from Ingolstadt, 1860 München and Erzgebirge Aue, with the latter already showing an active interest on him. To be honest, I don't think that's the right thing for his career: he's a great player at this level, and likely even a good player for the level above us; but at the 3.Liga level he'll be a fringe player at best and will likely just end up as a II Team player, back at this level or lower. Not that I mind! At this level, almost no player is irreplaceable (unless you have a Martin Harnik), and he will free up 10% of our wage budget - at the moment I simply cannot offer a contract to any player that wants wages as we're slightly above our budget, and this will free up enough space to get at least a couple of better options in the same transfer window. So yeah, basically my plans for this break is to ship him off, find a replacement for him, and possibly a better option for GK, DR, DL BWM, and/or Wingers - any one of those would be good.

[Deisler26]

Maybe sell with a loan back for a season?

That way, you get him for the year and the cash!

[Reiver]

Oberliga Hamburg 2023/24 Winter Transfer Season

So we lost Sejdida. I would have loved to have him loaned back for the season like @Deisler26but circumstances did not allow it. Football at this low a level is synonymous with short term contracts, and in this case the contract ended at the end of the season; with 3.Liga clubs interested in him, he simply did not want to renew. In the end, Aue didn't even contact us, they went straight to the player with a contract offer: Fringe Player and more than double the 500€ per week we were paying him. We were the ones that then offered him out - since he was going at the end of the season anyway, I'd rather have his wages available to go for other players - as I mentioned before, he was one of our top earners and I could bring in multiple players with that money back.

The other player leaving was Jonatan Rindom, and this one was all my fault - despite the fact that he was playing regularly, and he was playing well, I signed him while I was still figuring out how we were going to play, and I promised I'd play him as an MC... and then settled for a main formation that did not use any MCs. Hillerød Fodbold were not amused.

And so we did:

• Tom Kankowski, on loan from St. Pauli is our Sejdida replacement. Composure and Antecipation are not as good, but other than that he's a capable replacement for the next 6 months.
• Korbinian Müller is an experienced Goalkeeper at 33 years old, with a long career in the 3. Liga with Unterhaching and Stuttgarter Kickers, and had last played for St. Pauli II back in 2020,is our new first choice keeper.
• Gil-Linnart Walther, that came from the youth team of Wolfsburg,  and is the player I have higher hopes for, and I feel like he could be here for a few years.

[Reiver]

Oberliga Hamburg 2023/24 End of March Update

Well, we no longer depend on ourselves to win the league and fight for promotion, and what sucks most is that it was in our hands - twice! We had a perfect February, and also a perfect first half of March, all while Dassendorf started slipping, maybe accusing the pressure: drew against HEBC and Victoria in February, and then lost against Niendorf at the beginning of March. By this point we were just one point apart. The the 24th came along, and they cannot score against Tornesch; and we are not capitalising it at all as we are losing 2-0 against Niendorf. We managed to bring it back to 2-1 by the end of the first half, and then back to 2-2 in the 55th minute. The same minute Tornesch scores; and for 25 minutes we were equal on points - only for Dassendorf to score in the 88th minute. Then we played our main competition, and in a very level but not very good quality game, the points were again split. This means that while we still have a good chance, we are now dependent on another Dassendorf slip to win the league.

Verbandspokal Hamburg

We did play Dassendorf another time during this period, right in the middle of their February draws, and this time we played a lot better than them. A lot more incisive in front of goal, creating the best opportunities and largely controlling the game - their game came from, you guessed it, Harnik, who currently sits on 47 goals in 32 games on all competitions, 40 goals in the league.