Who are Heidenheim, how are they coping after a difficult transfer window, and what can Heart of Midlothian expect on Thursday night?
All that and more was answered by Stefan Bienkowski who has covered German football for more than 10 years and is host of the Gegenpress podcast. He spoke to Hearts Standard ahead of the Conference League clash at Tynecastle Park.
He described Heidenheim's rise to the Bundesliga as a "Cinderella story", despite a recent run of poor form that saw them knocked out of the cup by lower-league opposition.
Stefan also spoke about Heidenheim's summer transfer window, their style of play, and where Hearts can get success.
Read or listen to everything he said below.
Heidenheim are not one of the country's biggest names and only come to prominence in the last couple of years. Could you tell us a little about their background and a brief summary of where they came from and where they are now?
Yeah, I'd be absolutely amazed if most of your followers or viewers even knew who they were, to be honest with you. And that's not a slight on your followers, it's just a simple case that they are a bit of a Cinderella story in German football. They've come from utter obscurity and done that kind of Football Manager's absolute dream.
Frank Schmidt's been at the club for over 20 years now and he just has quite literally guided them up one season after another. Obviously not straight up, not consecutively, but they eventually got to the Bundesliga. And they took it by quite some surprise last season, which is of course why they're now in the Conference League.
But, they are a small club. I think Frank Schmidt is the longest-serving head coach in Europe's top five leagues if I'm not mistaken. It's something that does happen, probably more often in German football than it does elsewhere, where you do kind of have these head coaches who do just kind of bunker down at these kind of regional clubs and they just kind of become part of the furniture.
Christian Streich was at Freiburg for a similar time until he stepped down last year. So it's kind of common in German footbal where clubs are just quite happy to see these head coaches. And in this instance, Heidenheim have managed to kind of ride that wave all the way to the top tier and now in European football.
How did they do it?
It makes sense to say that he's been the kind of linchpin behind it all, much like Christian Streich at Freiburg, where players have come and gone and he's kind of been a steady kind of constant at the club tactically.
They're very, I'd say quite straightforward, very rigid counter-attacking football, fire down both wings, swing it into the box, hope the big man fires into the back of the net. And I know that sounds very rudimentary, but that is what brought them so much success last season. They had basically a front three of Jan-Niklas Beste, who moved on to Benfica in the summer, who was a left winger. He was working so well that he almost got a call-up to the national team because he had so many assists, a great set-piece taker as well.
On the right, they had Eren Dinkci – a really impressive young winger, who actually then moved to Freiburg this summer. And up front, they had [Tim] Kleindienst, who's this kind of big No.9, very classic kind of target man. And then an interesting thing is that a lot of these players had a very strong bond with the head coach. For example, Kleindienst, who moved to Borussia Monchengladbach this summer, was actually offered to move 12 months ago. And he basically said, 'You know what, I'm a bit of a journeyman, I'm in my mid to late 20s, and the only reason I'm here in the Bundesliga is because this head coach, Frank Schmidt, believed in me. He took me to the top tier. I want to do what I can for him in the Bundesliga'.
So he stayed for an extra season, scored a bucket load of goals for them, helped them get to where they finished in the league last season in European qualification, and then moved on in the summer there. And that's probably the kind of prologue to where they are right now. Because they are having issues this season, they're not quite the same team.
Frank Schmidt was all very happy and smiles last season, whereas he's getting a little bit nippy this year with the media. And it's mostly down to those three players in particular moving on. It was a very good squad. It happens in football all the time, where you just have the right blend of people come at the right time under the right head coach. They all took the club to incredible success, but as seems to be the case in modern football, that's when bigger clubs come along and start picking away at them.
The Athletic said they had the worst transfer window in the Bundesliga – losing those three players. What about the way the new players have come in, how have they settled?
They lost at the weekend to Holstein Kiel, who are undoubtedly the worst team in the league. It was their first win of the season, actually, in the Bundesliga. They are just cannon fodder this year, Holstein Kiel. For them to actually pick up a win against Heidenheim at the weekend was quite significant. It came just a few days after Heidenheim were knocked out of the German Cup by a team in the second division.
That's probably a good way of looking at why their season is having a bit of... the wheels are maybe falling off so far because they're obviously playing in Europe and then the German cup. The interesting thing was, after that cup game where Schmidt did try to rest a few players and bring in some youth players, it didn't quite work. He brought on Paul Wanner, who is one of the new signings, who has done quite well and is probably one the Hearts fans should keep an eye on on Thursday. He scored a goal in extra time, it didn't count. It led to this really interesting tension in the post-match press conference, where a lot of the journalists who follow the club, who are from that area, were saying to Schmidt, 'Look, is this an example of how this team just doesn't have the depth to play in three competitions?'; It felt like it really struck a nerve. He really pushed back. He was like, 'Look, if you think the backup players aren't good enough, then that's your problem. I've got nothing to worry about. We're going to go Holstein Kiel. We finished that game strongly. We're going to win there and everything's going to be fine'. They go to Kiel and lose, and it has been this running trend where Schmidt probably is trying his best to try to transition this team onto new players. Paul Wanner is probably the perfect example. He's a young attacking midfielder from Bayern Munich. He plays at number 10 or as a second striker. He's done really well, but he's a very different type of player to, for example, Kleindienst who is a very traditional target man in the box.
If you look at the way that Heidenheim do play this season, they're maybe not counter-attacking as well as they used to do or maybe not getting as many crosses into the box, although they still are. There's just not the same players in the box to do that. For example, if I was Hearts, I probably would be expecting to play a team in Heidenheim who will still very much focus on getting the ball down the wings. Both full-backs, [Jonas] Fohrenbach and Marnon-Thomas Busch on the right, are quite high in the league standings for crosses into the box. They still focus a lot of their attention to playing the way they did last season. They just don't really have the service on either wing, so they're relying on the full-backs now. They also don't have that big target man in the box to knock it home. Instead, they've got Paul Wanner, who's very good. He can be a very good poacher. He can be very good with the ball at his feet, but I wouldn't really call him a target man.
They're a team in transition, there's no doubt about it and I suspect they probably will be okay to avoid relegation, but at this moment in time, things are very tricky for them. They are trying to find their feet with a lot of things.
What can Hearts expect in terms of the system they play? How do you think they will set up at Tynecastle?
I think they'll probably set up quite defensively and try to counter-attack Hearts. They've had quite a lot of success in Europe so far, but they have played smaller clubs. I think they are probably prioritising European football, in a sense, because it's probably a once-off opportunity for the club as a whole. They are putting their eggs in that basket if you will.
If you look at where they have picked up wins this season, against the likes of Mainz and St Pauli, these are teams at the bottom of the half of the table. They've thought, 'We can go toe-to-toe with these guys, so they're going to try and do exactly that'. They'll sit defensively, they'll probably try and counter-attack Hearts.
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I suspect they'll probably show them a degree of respect, but probably still think we need to try and bounce back from the last two results. Schmidt alone would think that because he may be feeling a bit of pressure. Not pressure to the extent he might feel for his job, but you can tell that these poor results recently are definitely getting to him. They'll probably feel like a strong performance against Hearts will be a necessity. That's where we'll probably see Heidenheim try to sit deep, counter-attack, but then they will try to exert themselves on the game. Against smaller clubs in the Bundesliga, who are around them in terms of quality, man-for-man, they do try to grow into games.
If you look at the way that they score goals, seven of their league goals this season have come after the 60th minute. They do tend to finish games quite strongly, particularly matches where they are kind of going toe-to-toe with teams. That's probably why that Holstein Kiel result from the weekend was such a bizarre outlier because I would have put my money on them winning that game. Just because they struggled against bigger teams. Typically, they do quite well against other sides because they still have the structures in place. They're still relatively playing the same system under Schmidt, and the players still want to play for him. It's not as if it's a team here who've lost their heads or anything like that. I think Hearts will be in for a hard game, I've got no doubt about it, but I wouldn't say it's an impossible task for them by any means.
What would you say the strengths and weaknesses of Heidenheim are? What are the aspects of their game that Hearts will need to be wary of?
They still create a lot of chances. I think that's the key thing, and like I said earlier on, they're still kind of focusing a lot on that wing play. The two full-backs, Fohrenbach and Busch, are still really quite impressive across the Bundesliga as a whole, in terms of getting crosses in. If I was the Hearts head coach, I would be saying, we need to find a way to close those guys down and make sure we... I know it's quite hard to maybe cut off service to a full-back because they're already in defence, but that's the kind of danger zone that Heidenheim will be looking at. If they can start moving up the pitch if they can park themselves in the halfway line and start swinging crosses into the box, that's when you'll know that they're beginning to exert their dominance on the game, and that's when they'll know that they're hoping to try and score goals.
They don't really have that kind of big target man, like Kleindienst who was there last season. They still do have two or three strikers who are doing relatively well, a lot of them very young. Paul Wanner is definitely the standout one there. To the extent that some people at Bayern Munich think he could potentially be a Bayern Munich star one day. So, he is a real young player in the making, and he's the one who has kind of been the guy who's stepped up and scored goals for them in these kind of ties, particularly against Mainz and St Pauli. So, I'd be keeping an eye on him, and I'd be keeping an eye on both full-backs if I was a hard-skilled coach.
And what about the weakness side of things? Where do they struggle?
They're quite poor at conceding early goals this season. It's definitely kind of been a running theme for them. Defensively, they're probably not as strong as they were last season. I think a lot of that's just down to the fact that they just don't really have the attacking players in attack like I mentioned: Dinkci and Beste who were the two wingers last season. So, they don't really have that attacking dominance or that kind of ability to pressure teams and then kind of break them down. So, it seems almost like because Heidenheim do kind of march up the park, try to create chances, but they don't finish them like they used to, or maybe service into the box isn't quite what it was, it comes back down the pitch more often than it used to. And that's when teams do kind of have a go at them. They've got decent defenders, got a decent goalkeeper, but by no means are they league leaders by any means.
They are a team who over-performed last season with these individual star players and, since they've moved on, they've reverted back to what I would say is a kind of lower mid-table team in the Bundesliga. So, if I was Hearts, I'd be definitely trying to get at them from the get-go. I'd be looking to try and score early goals. And then at that point, you're really kind of forcing them to attack Hearts rather than their more preferred role of kind of sitting deep and counter-attacking. I think there are definitely goals to be had in this against this Heidenheim defence. And if you can kind of close down those drawbacks and Paul Wanner, then you could be on route to success there.
What do you think the view is from Heidenheim looking at Hearts and coming to Tynecastle, and what they would consider success?
I think typically German football has a lot of respect for Scottish football. It sees [the Scottish] league as a very traditional league, a lot of prestige, a lot of fan support. So, I would be very surprised if Heidenheim didn't show up at Tynecastle with a huge amount of respect for Hearts. I would go so far as to say they were going to show up to try and win. If I had to guess in terms of the quality of both teams, I would say this is certainly a game that Hearts could and probably should be looking to try and win. And based on Heidenheim's recent form, I'd be quite surprised if they were able to go there with the confidence to win this game.
I think they're probably hoping to take a draw and a good performance, which is probably more important than anything else at this point in time because they got knocked out of the German Cup, they lost to the worst team in the Bundesliga, which set off huge alarm bells. And even though they have won their first two fixtures in the Conference League, a defeat here as well would maybe start setting off even more alarm bells. They'd need to find a way to kind of, not so much stop the rot, but when your team's in a bad form, all you're hoping for is some sort of resolve to kind of stem that.
That could be it in Edinburgh, but I would probably say Hearts are the team... looking at Heidenheim, they certainly shouldn't be threatened by them or intimidated by them. I think it's a team that Hearts will definitely have a go at.
I'm hoping, I haven't put any kind of false hope in the Hearts fans. The only thing I'd also say is that the way the German teams do typically play, it's why we named our podcast Gegenpress: it's the tactic that German football's famous for. But that tactic only works if you're Jurgen Klopp and you have [Robert] Lewandowski up front and, you know, Mario Götze behind you or whoever else. A lot of these mid-table teams play a kind of Lidl version of gegenpressing, which is very much a kind of punt and run, very quick. It's very fast, don't get me wrong, and it's very in-your-face, but it's not 100 times dissimilar from the way that Scottish football is played.
I'm sure Hearts fans are maybe rolling their eyes at the thought of me comparing their football to gegenpressing, but what I mean by that is, we play a very high pace of football in Scotland as well. I think sometimes that might actually play into our hands when we play teams of equal standing. I mean, if it was a Spanish team who are down their luck, I may be saying be wary because, at the end of the day, they can still pass it around to a decent Scottish team, but when it comes to a Bundesliga side, I think the two kind of cultures and the tactics might match up quite well, actually, and might suit Hearts in this game.
Looking at what Heidenheim are about in terms of counter-attacking, don't seem to want the ball too much, don't want to be the protagonist... It seems like both teams are more threatening when they are not controlling 55-60% of the possession.
I remember a game I watched of Heidenheim, it was the start of the season, and they went to the Westfalenstadion to play Dortmund, and they lost the game 4-2, but they kind of came back into the second half and they could have taken a point off Dortmund that day. That's not to say that Heidenheim are good, I mean Dortmund are really dreadful this season, so I take that with a pinch of salt. But the reason that Heidenheim were able to get back into that game was because Dortmund just turned it into a box-to-box riot, really. They had no control over the game, they had no ability to pass the ball, keep the ball, and take the sting out of the game. So Heidenheim eventually got back into it because, as I said, they are still at their core a counter-attacking team, so if you keep throwing attacks at them and losing the ball, they will eventually keep going.
And they have scored a lot of goals in the second half or even the last third of games this season, so they do kind of have this never-say-die approach to games. Under Frank Schmidt, they've still got a huge amount of morale on that team. That's just something to be wary of: if Hearts do kind of turn into this box-to-box affair, then that might suit Heidenheim in the end, but I think Hearts should definitely be looking to try and win this game. I'll put it that way.
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