Claus Costa: “We’re fully focused on the here and now”

The Bundesliga end-of-season run-in is well underway. HSV sporting director Claus Costa has experienced this phase of the campaign from various different perspectives. As a player, coach, scout and sporting director, he’s seen both on and off the pitch how titles, European spots and relegation can all be decided in the final weeks of the season.

In his current position as HSV’s sporting director, Costa sits right alongside the first team on the bench, working in close contact with the squad and coaching staff. That direct involvement is particularly visible on days like today (Tuesday, 21st April), when the 41-year-old joined the group for a team training session. As the players kicked off their preparations for the home game on matchday 31 against TSG Hoffenheim, the sporting director took questions from the media gathered at the training pitches. He went into detail on...

...his assessment of the on-pitch situation: Our primary goal is to secure our place in the division for next season. We go back to it time and again, and that’s why we didn’t celebrate as if we’d secured safety when we won away at Wolfsburg, but we also didn’t turn our focus to planning for a 2026/27 season back in the 2. Bundesliga after the first three games of the season, when we were supposedly doomed to finish bottom. In this respect, we’re fully focused on the here and now. I’m not interested in the latest stories, rather focused on ensuring that we put in a good performance in our next game and manage to stay up as a newly-promoted side in what is an incredibly tight league right now. That’s what matters to us.

...Hoffenheim at home: We have to always be aware that we’re playing top-flight football now, and every opponent is incredibly strong. We rarely head into any Bundesliga fixture as the favourite. Despite this, we’ve managed to create some truly special moments at the Volksparkstadion – even recently against Augsburg, we were able to really apply the pressure despite going down to ten men. It wasn’t long before that, as well, that we got to experience such emotional scenes and incredible games on home turf. We also know not to take any of this for granted and that we’ve had to work incredibly hard for these moments. That’s why we’ll be putting in the hard work again this week, to create more moments like those. I’m absolutely confident that, together with our fans and the buzz in the stadium, we’ll deliver a strong performance on Saturday.

“Our squad is strong enough, and the coaching staff have always found ways of making it work”

...the sense of togetherness in the season run-in: We’ve been with each other for a while now, we’re accustomed to how we all work together, and we still know how to be constructive with one another. Everyone is giving it all they’ve got, everyone is optimistic. We took two days to shake off the defeat in the derby, but now our full focus is tuned to the upcoming game against Hoffenheim. That’s why we’re paying less attention to the outside noise and not worrying about how many games are left, how the other teams are doing, what our schedule looks like. We’re totally concentrated on Saturday night, the prime-time fixture in that six o’clock slot with what’ll undoubtedly be an incredible atmosphere at the Volksparkstadion.

...the latest update on Luka Vuskovic: I think there’s a decent chance that Luka will play for us again before the season is over. He’s incredibly ambitious and he desperately wants to be back out on the pitch with us. We’re hopeful for this reason. We just have to be patient and wait and see, and we hope that he’ll be back available soon. Of course, we’re missing Luka’s presence. Every team feels it when a top player or regular starter is out – it always makes a difference. But we’ve already shown, for example away in Mainz, that we can defend well without him and that others can take on that responsibility. Our squad is strong enough for that, and the coaching staff have consistently found ways of solving problems like these. We don’t want to talk too much about the players who are missing, instead we’re focusing on who is available right now.

...Miro Muheim’s injury: “It’s extremely frustrating for Miro and for us. He’ll do everything he can to get back on the pitch as quickly as possible. In the best-case scenario, he might be available again right at the end. He also has the personal goal of making it to the World Cup. It’s a really frustrating development, as Miro is a fixture in the starting XI. At the same time, though, we have solid options to replace him. In Fabio Balde, William Mikelbrencis, Bakery Jatta, Giorgi Gocholeishvili, Noah Katterbach, and,looking to a young player, Louis Lemke, we have six players who have already run out in this role. We have full confidence in whoever steps in for him.”