The Bundesliga soccer team welcomes second-placed SG Bornheim on Sunday and wants to forget the 5-0 defeat from the first leg.
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Marco Defigus (left) and SV Münster are striving to stay up in the Bundesliga South.
(Photo: Dominik Claus)
MÜNSTER – On Sunday, the Bundesliga club SV Münster will start the rest of the second half of the season with a home game against SG Bornheim (the kick-off is at 3:30 p.m.). In the first leg, SVM clearly lost 5-0 to Frankfurt, but SV trainer Naser Selmanaj sees completely different conditions on their own pitch: “They really took us apart back then. What we showed there was so underground that it had nothing to do with competitive sport. But at home, a different situation awaits us. The guys are fit and focused, everyone is looking forward to getting started again.”
Against the guests from Bornheim, who only suffered three defeats in the current season, Münster’s coach can draw on the full range of personnel. He sees his team “ready for the start, everyone is on board”. Relegation remains the big goal of SV Münster. Selmanaj sees a chance against the second in the table, because “we like the teams that are at the top. We want to get the new year off to a good start and get the points we need to stay in the league as quickly as possible.” It doesn’t seem unlikely that we’ll succeed. Because on the natural turf at the Mäusberg, Münster has already stumbled a number of teams rated significantly higher this season. Even leaders SV Unter-Flockenbach couldn’t get past a 2:2 draw in November. Eintracht Wald-Michelbach lost 1-2, and fourth-placed Hanauer SC even lost 7-2. Only one of eleven home games was lost, the SVM is fifth in the home table. The best conditions to bag the necessary points for relegation.
Overall, Selmanaj looks back on the preparation with satisfaction. The team worked well and pulled along, even if the results in the friendlies were not always satisfactory. “Nevertheless, we were able to draw a lot of knowledge from the games,” says the coach.
The fact that his team is there when it really matters was shown most recently in the derby in the Dieburg district cup against Germania Ober-Roden. In the quarter-finals, SVM won 3-1 and is now in the semi-finals. With TS Ober-Roden there is only one association league in the way, the other two semi-finalists are the group leagues TSV Lengfeld and Hassia Dieburg. Winning the title and moving into the Hessenpokal would be a nice bonus for Münster’s coach, but by no means a must. “Of course you can take that with you if it arises. But our priority is clearly the league.”
With the 18-year-old Anas Hamed, who came from Rot-Weiss Darmstadt, the team gained a strong, flexible talent in the winter. “He can play in almost any position in midfield and can also be used on the wings,” says Selmanaj, who is happy about the newcomer, who meets his brother Tareq at SVM.
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