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Chronicle
2017-2019
Success Through Offense
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Since November 2017, Florian Kohfeldt has been responsible for SV Werder Bremen’s Bundesliga team. After Viktor Skripnik and Alexander Nouri, he is the third coach who trained Werder’s U23 before becoming head coach. This marked the start of a new Werder euphoria.
Kohfeldt not only revived the team’s resilience but also gave them an unusually brave attacking approach for a previously insecure team near the bottom of the table—a style they quickly embraced despite some lingering setbacks. Thanks to a clear 4-0 victory over Hannover 96 in Kohfeldt’s second match in charge, the Green-Whites ended a seemingly endless period of suffering.
Since that 2-0 win over Hertha BSC at the end of April, Werder had chased a Bundesliga victory for almost seven months across seasons. In early December, the team broke an even longer spell. They hadn’t won a Bundesliga match in Dortmund for over ten and a half years before Maximilian Eggestein and Theodor Gebre Selassie sparked a 2-1 victory.
Although this respectable result wasn’t enough to escape the relegation zone before Christmas, their later 3-2 DFB-Pokal round of 16 win over Freiburg provided a consoling end to the year. Kohfeldt predicted, “That was a very important message: We can rightfully say that quality is in us, and we will call on that in the second half of the season.”
No more worries about relegation
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The team should not ignore their coach's instructions. Although the necessary victories failed to materialize in the early weeks of the second half of the season, the sincere applause from Jupp Heynckes, coach of FC Bayern, who once again pulled away from the competition early on, for Werder's spirited but unrewarded away performance in Munich was further proof of the positive development: “Unlike many others here, they didn't just defend, they played forward with very clear ideas.”
Soon, Bremen finally backed up their playful approach with consistently good results. Within two months – between the beginning of February and the beginning of April – Werder secured 19 points in eight games, virtually eliminating any relegation worries.
The fifth-best team in the second half of the season was never in danger of being relegated. Florian Kohfeldt already had his sights set on the next step forward: “We should consider the way we achieved this a success. But staying in the Bundesliga cannot be our only goal in the long term.”
New claim
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However, this challenging new venture meant having to do without a key figure who had been indispensable in the recent past, which had by no means been marked by success. Zlatko Junuzovic, who had recently succeeded Clemens Fritz as captain, returned to his native Austria after six and a half years on the Weser and almost 200 competitive games in a Werder shirt. In addition, the undisputed regular Thomas Delaney, who was moving to Borussia Dortmund, had to be replaced.
But Frank Baumann and Florian Kohfeldt also demonstrated the fearlessness, creativity, and initiative they demand from their team on the pitch during the 2018/19 season—both in their open approach to ambitious future goals and in the personnel decisions necessary to achieve them. They fostered a spirit of optimism.
It wasn't just the signing of former Ajax captain Davy Klaassen that caused a stir; the return of Martin Harnik, Yuya Osako, Nuri Sahin and the insatiable, eternally young Claudio Pizarro also significantly increased the quality of the squad. Halfway through the season, it is still completely unclear where the journey will lead. “Before the season, we committed ourselves to a tough path and said that we wanted to get into Europe. We're not going to change that,” emphasized the head coach after the bitter 2-3 defeat in Leipzig at the end of the first half of the season, which left Werder in tenth place with 22 points going into the winter break. He also knew: "We haven't earned enough points for the kind of soccer we play. But the way we play football is right. I also have a team in the dressing room with a strong character. I'm looking forward to the second half of the season."
A phenomenal week of goosebumps to mark the 120th anniversary
His team recently demonstrated what it is capable of during a phenomenal week of celebrations both on and off the pitch to mark the club's anniversary. On February 4, the club's 120th anniversary, SVW hosted a festive birthday dinner for high-ranking guests, before 2,500 ecstatic fans celebrated the LAUTER WERDER concert at the “Alte Werft” three days later.
Barely 48 hours earlier, the Green-Whites and the undisputed Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund had played an epic DFB Cup round of 16 match in their soccer temple, which was filled with over 81,000 spectators. Claudio Pizarro and Martin Harnik equalized twice in extra time (3-3) before captain Max Kruse sealed a 7-5 penalty shootout victory for Werder after two attempts by Dortmund were saved by fabulous goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka. "You can't get more setbacks than that, you can't get more emotion on the pitch, coupled with cleverness. Simply outstanding," cheered head coach Kohfeldt. The icing on the cake of these memorable days was a clear 4-0 home win against FC Augsburg, which reduced the gap to the coveted international places to just three points for the time being.
Contact
Tel +49 (0) 421 - 43 45 90
Fax +49 (0) 421 - 49 35 55
SV Werder Bremen
Service Department
Franz-Böhmert-Straße 1c
28205 Bremen