An Eintracht Braunschweig thread, feat. your host Alex_K [R]

What the heck, I'll do a team thread.

So well, new season, what's up? Euphoria continues, and the Bayern game in the cup will bring in a nice amount of extra cash (pretty sure to be the live game on free tv in the first round, if it's not there'd be something fishy).

Will be hard to get a ticket next season, with probably arround 10k season tickets and the stadium capped at 23k for most of the games. With the tickets for the visiting team there won't be much available on match days.

I'm pretty optimistic - the team should be good enough not to worry about relegation. Staying up is the to priority, we can't use a set back now. If all goes will going up to the Bundesliga in the not so far away future will come closer to reality.

As for the squad, the 2011 season's team will return almost completely (2010/11 squad: http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/3liga/vereine/3-liga/2010-11/eintracht-braunschweig-41/kader.html ).

Of the players gone, the only real loss is Bellarabi (to Leverkusen). Calamita (to Aalen) was number three on his position (central striker), and while a decent back up him leaving made room for improvements. The other two players leaving: Kragl (1 game, while I would have kept him for the reserve side the first team will do without him) and Amrhein (11 games), while he has some skills he wouldn't have played much in the overcrowded midfield (he joins Haching).

New players:

N. Zimmermann (from Saarbrücken) and O. Petersch (from Oberhausen): the two candidates to replace Bellarabi. Zimmermann was one of the best attacking midfielders in the 3. Liga (and almost as good with giving assists as Bellarabi), Petersch played more defensive for Oberhausen, but was brought in clearly for the offense by Eintracht. I haven't yet puzzled out how they might fit into the starting line up: if Eintracht continues to play 4-1-4-1 (very likely given the new signings) there are for open spots in midfield. Of the old players, Kruppke, Boland and Vrancic should be sure starters, so this leaves either Zimmermann or Petersch as an attacking winger, supporting lone striker Kumbela. Maybe Vrancic will be on the bench occasionally too, other than that one of the two new guys will have to start the season as a back up.

M. Correia (from Lautern): Eintrachts defense was already good enough for the 2. Liga, but Correia will add to the depth, probably mainly as a back up for Henn/Dogan.

G. and R. Korte (from Mechtersheim): twins, both attacking players. Again, thanks to the connection of the staff, two young players from the Oberliga Southwest. Has worked in the past (Onuegbu, Morabit), so wait and see.

Missing: another striker. So far we have Kumbela (clear no. 1), Fetsch (back up) and G. Korte (unproven so far). Kruppke is wasted as a striker. Three players on trial: J. Hjelm (finnish youth international, broke his leg during the trial, unfortunate), P. Merkel (no relation to you know who known) and K. Soltanpour. They are clearly going for another young talent, fine for me. But at least one player needs to be signed.

Predicted line-up:

[LINEUP-4-5-1]Kumbela, Zimmermann, Kruppke, Boland, Vrancic, Theuerkauf, Kessel, Henn, Dogan, Reichel, Petkovic[/LINEUP-4-5-1]

Bench: Davari, Fuchs, Correia, Pfitzner, Petersch, Reinhardt, Fetsch, new striker

Finally.....

it is Lions vs. Lions again. It is 1966 vs. 1967 !



vs.



Auf die Löwen !!!

The club should really look into the casting show business - now the 4th striker is on trial . Don't get me wrong, it's a good approach, but I hope the squad will be complete soon.

New trialist: Ariel Abed Dakouri, 18 year old forward from Grasshopper Zürich, with some Swiss Youth NT games.

Hjelm (because of his injury) and Soltanpour (due to not impressing) won't be signed, Merkel still might.

Pre-season friendlies so far:
TSV Bienenbüttel (VI) 12:1
Arminia Vechelde (IX) 13:0
TSV Hillerse (VI) 8:1

*subbed*

Welcome then, I guess .

Pierre "the German Drogba" Merkel (http://www.eintracht.com/pics/medien//big_image_1308913956623.jpeg) has been signed now. I'm still unsure if it's good to have no striker with a 2nd Bundesliga scoring record, but there's a good track record with lower division players recently (and almost all the veterans Eintracht signed during the decade or so before the current coach/manager frankly sucked). Dennis Lemke is on trial at Jena, would be nice for him to get a contract there, it's almost guaranteed he wouldn't see the field anymore here.

Latest friendly was a 2:0 win over Preußen Münster.

You have the national TV game against Bayern in the Pokal correct?

Yes - mainly nice because it means free extra cash.

Yeah, better than another early knockout

Have you guys released your new kits for next season yet?

Quite some time ago - the last game of the 2011 season was already played in the new kits (and they are on sale as well already). Nothing spectacular at all, but just go to http://www.eintracht.com/ - it's the kit worn on the starting page, as well as in every recent match report linked on the main page. I don't think there's been any picture of the away kits, though.

Getting the live game is a pretty good insurance, even if you loose the money is the same is if you went out in the second round. I don't particularily fear Bayern either - you have to go back a long time to find a non-amateur team they didn't have problems against in the first round.

I like this shirt, but what's the deal with the wrinkled look?

http://shop.eintracht.com/teamline-...tion/eintracht-braunschweig-t-shirt-puma.html

I guess it looks dynamic or something - I'm not in marketing, so what do I know . It appears to be sold out anyway.

That would be merchandising

So it must have been as good looking as I thought.

But yes, that's what I was trying to get at there........

Well, I thought of it more in general terms - you can actually buy factory wrinkled shirts these days, for some reason . I guess they use the same logic for the photos, considering that all shirts in the web shop are shown wrinkled.

If there was one team in the first round draw that can kick out Bayern it's Eintracht, so you can rest easy knowing this.

Today/yesterday (depending on timezone) another pre-season win, this time 4:0 against Erfurt. Pretty good result - you shouldn't overrate friendly results of course, but so far the team seems to work together as good as last season. Goals from two new signings as well (Petersch and Zimmermann, with the other two coming from Fetsch). Upcoming friendly against Mainz, should be another good test.

Sweet, so when is that scheduled for?.......

The Mainz game? At the end of the current pre-season camp, on July 1st, played in arthur_d's hometown of Marburg.

Am crossing my fingers that Braunschweig are the "surprise" of the 2.BL this season and stay up a long while. We have you guys early on and should be interesting to see the Loewen v. Loewen.

Certainly more important than the game against Bayern's travelling side show.

Staying up should be quite possible. Even in the 3. Liga the team was better than what you usually find in the bottom region of the second division. What needs to be done now is laying the groundwork for promotion in the near future.

I think that's everyone's problem in the 2.BL

Other than the sporting aspect of Braunschweig I am not familiar with how the club is run, its finances, etc. Any news on that?

I wouldn't mind real derbies once in a while...

The club probably is one of the best run in German football right now. In 2007-2008 Eintracht was almost bankrupt, the entire old leadership and the coach (Möhlmann, who stepped down) left the club. Since then the new club leadership has, without a major sponsor backing them, radically reduced costs, made the club almost debt free, got stadium reconstruction off the ground, and obviously achieved some success on the field.

This season Eintracht actually had one of the lower budgets in the 3. Liga (2,6 million Euros - that's not much more than Babelsberg had (2,3 million Euros)).

Right now they still can't compete financially with the top clubs of the 2. Bundesliga. But for the first time in my life time there's actual progress at the club (this hadn't been the case since the 1970s, despite some success here and there on the way - but in the big picture the club had declined constantly during the last 30+ years up until 2008).

Today the open sale for season tickets started (up until now only previous season ticket owners could renew their ticket). According to reports the line is 500 meters long. 9000 season tickets have been sold so far. Last season Hertha BSC had the most season tickets sold in the 2. Bundesliga, with 14.000 after the first matchday. If they don't stop selling before this number might be reached by Eintracht as things are going right now (though the top spot in the 2. Liga is out of reach this season, they couldn't sell as many tickets as Frankfurt even if they wanted to due to stadium size alone).

Eintracht lost 0:1 against Mainz, goal by Heller in the 84th. According to the official match report Eintracht had more chances but couldn't score. Eintracht missed the injured Dogan and Kessel, other than those two my predicted starting line up for the 1st matchday doesn't look too off:

Petkovic (46. Davari) - Reichel, Correia (46. Pfitzner), Henn (83. Fuchs), Petersch (46. Washausen) - Theuerkauf (61. Turan) - Zimmermann ( 77. G. Korte), Vrancic (83. Unger), Kruppke (61. Reinhardt), Boland (61. R. Korte) - Kumbela (77. Fetsch)

Two friendlies to go before 1860:

versus my dad's old club Acosta Braunschweig (6th division) on sunday, versus Osnabrück next weekend.