Match Preview vs 1.FC Magdeburg

Our Opponents: 

Christian Titz and his newly promoted squad are currently sitting in 17th place in the table, but not without some praise from outside opinions. Magdeburg have created an identity as a good possession based team but they don’t score many goals at the other end. Notable former HSV Players are also in the ranks at FCM with Tatsuya Ito and Moritz Kwarteng joining up with Titz once again in Sachsen-Anhalt. A mixed run of form recently as left Magdeburg struggling to get out of the bottom of the league standings. Two wins from their last five has kept them afloat, against fellow relegation scrappers, Greuther Fürth and Jahn Regensburg but they still can’t seem to escape this relegation dogfight. 

Match Facts:

Playing football

The footballing approaches of both teams are similar, especially the fact that both coaches Tim Walter and Christian Titz favour a game in which their teams register a lot of possession and play football instead of just knocking the ball long forward. Magdeburg are even a little more dominant than HSV in this category, as no team in the league has as many and long phases of possession as the visitors. With 60.5 per cent of the game shares, they record the highest value of all 18 teams, HSV comes in at 59.5 per cent and is thus in third place. A kick-and-rush game is out of the question in the clash of these two opponents, on Sunday there will be pure football to watch.

Offensive potential

With 17 goals from twelve games, the team of coach Tim Walter, who is aiming for his fourth home win of the season, is average in the league, so there is still some room for improvement. The development potential is even clearer for Magdeburg, who have only scored 13 goals so far. Three areas in particular are to blame for this: In the entire season, the FCM scored neither a goal from a counterattack nor from a corner kick, and only 1. FC Nürnberg has a worse scoring rate than Magdeburg, with only every 13th shot on goal leading to success.

Big reunion

With FCM coach Christian Titz, an old acquaintance returns to the Volkspark. The Magdeburg coach coached the U17s, the second team and later the professionals at HSV, with whom he was unable to prevent relegation in 2018 despite a great run to catch up. In addition to Titz, Tatsuya Ito and Moritz-Broni Kwarteng, two other players who played under Titz at the time, return to Hamburg - as do Bakery Jatta, Jonas David and Anssi Suhonen from the current HSV squad.