There was not much going on at FC St. Pauli’s training ground on the warm, humid Wednesday morning. In the absence of the national players and without a few injured players and young players who were allowed to play in the U23s that evening, 13 field players and three goalkeepers were on the lush green field at Kollau. And they were not as grumpy as some might assume after two opening defeats.
“We feel like we’ve arrived,” said Hauke Wahl after the session ended. “We had more possession in both games than many people would have thought. In the end, possession doesn’t score goals, we have to be honest about that, but it shows that we can keep up and dominate games for certain phases.”
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But the naked truth is also that “we didn’t get any points in either game, that something was missing in both games.” And yet it is always important to have a certain balance, to see the positive things, to create chances and concede very little in both games. “But you also have to be careful not to sugarcoat it.”
However, the local club also offered things that were obviously in need of improvement. “We need to be more dangerous in the final third, even though we found very good solutions against Union to get out of the first third and into the next level,” said Wahl. In the final third, there was simply a lack of precision and a lack of coordination once or twice. “We need to work on that because we deserve to create more chances.”
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Braun-Weiß would have actually deserved a “clean sheet”, as the Brit says, meaning a game without conceding a goal. But both in Berlin and in the opening match against Heidenheim, St. Pauli conceded relatively easy goals from set pieces. “If you concede two goals from set pieces in two games, that obviously shouldn’t happen,” the central defender summed it up.
Compared to last year, we have “changed a bit in the way we stand,” explained the Hamburg native. “During the preparation, we didn’t have so many set pieces against us, so I think we’re still in the phase of finding out what suits us, how we feel comfortable, which spaces we’d rather have occupied.” In the end, it’s always the case that you have to neglect one space a little. “You can’t cover everything at the same time, there are too few players on the field for that.”
