Heidenheim travels to Dortmund as league leaders – a historic place for the Ostalb club. CEO Sanwald is pleased with the start, but warns against BVB.
1. FC Heidenheim will face Borussia Dortmund on Saturday. CEO Holger Sanwald will probably be making the trip to the Ruhr region with good memories. Just over a year ago, he celebrated the Swabians’ first point in the Bundesliga – against eight-time German champions Borussia Dortmund. The newly promoted team travelled to BVB with two defeats under their belts, trailing 0-2 after a quarter of an hour, but managing to draw 2-2 in the end. Now FCH will be playing in Dortmund again, again on the third matchday, again under floodlights on a September evening – but this time as the leader.
Already six points more than last time
Leading the table after two match days is “a statistical gimmick that obviously has no meaning,” Sanwald told the German Press Agency before Friday’s match. “Much more important is that our team has already managed to score six points towards our big goal of staying in the league.”
That’s six more than at the same time last season, as offensive player Adrian Beck recently calculated. “We couldn’t have dreamed of a better start,” said the 27-year-old after Heidenheim’s five wins in the first five competitive matches. “We need to build on that now.” Why not at BVB?
Holger Sanwald: “It will be a big challenge.”
The individual quality of the Dortmund players is “huge,” said Sanwald. New signings such as striker Serhou Guirassy, who came from VfB Stuttgart and is about to make his debut for Borussia, would prove this. Or the national players Maximilian Beier, Waldemar Anton and Pascal Groß, who BVB signed in the summer. “It will be a big challenge to prevail against this BVB away in front of more than 80,000 spectators,” said Sanwald. But they are looking forward to it – and to the support of more than 3,000 FCH fans.
Dortmund are still in the process of finding their feet. Despite an inconsistent performance, they managed a 2-0 win against Frankfurt, and a 0-0 draw in Bremen. In Heidenheim, however, everything seems to be working again despite the departure of key players – this time Tim Kleindienst, Jan-Niklas Beste and Eren Dinkci.
Top start to the season for Wanner and Scienza
“The course of the season will show whether we can achieve this on the road,” said Sanwald. What the team has shown so far after the personnel changes has definitely “impressed” him, said the 57-year-old. Paul Wanner, on loan from Bayern Munich and the Léo Scienza, brought in from SSV Ulm for example, have made a great start. Captain Patrick Mainka and midfielder Lennard Maloney have long been key pillars of the Heidenheim team – and both once played in the BVB reserves.
For him, a trip to Dortmund is still something “extraordinary,” said Sanwald. He has been at the helm of the Heidenheim football team for 30 years. He led them from the regional league to the Bundesliga. Together with coach Frank Schmidt, he shaped the club into a European Cup participant. Now he is traveling with him to BVB as the league leader – and is hoping for a similar surprise to the one a good twelve months ago.
Broadcast on Sat., 14.9.2024 14:00, Stadium, SWR1 Rhineland-Palatinate
