Bundesliga 2026/27 Tactical Previews | SV Elversberg | OneFootball

Our Get German Football News Bundesliga 2026/27 tactical preview series continues. The second part of our “series within the series” takes a look at the second “Graue Maus” team to surface in this year’s German top division. Having already taken a look at Paderborn, we now turn to Elversberg; otherwise known as the “little Saarland club that could”. Elversberg’s summer transfer activity strongly suggests the club actually wishes to be more than a “Graue Maus aspirant”. With a combined €12.1m in outlays, this team hopes to remain in the Oberhaus for at least another year. We shall devote considerable thought below to determine whether this might be possible.

This potential “Graue Maus” team carries with it elephantine baggage. Namely, German football purists naturally wish to know whether or not they run afoul of our sacred traditions and customs. Is this another Hoffenheim or Ingolstadt? Many a Pfälzer (including this one) has undertaken the short journey westward in order to investigate this point. The author feels that focusing the opening introductory paragraphs on this question seems an appropriate use of time. We must know! For all the charming stories attached to Elversberg, what is the real reason behind their rapid rise to the German top flight? Spoiler Alert! Yes, there’s obviously some money involved.

Local pharmaceutical entrepreneur Frank Holzer and his URSAPHARM company prop up the club with their financial backing. Comparisons to Hoffenheim and Leverkusen are inevitable, but not entirely fair. Holzer is unquestionably a wealthy patron who has materially helped elevate his hometown club, but Elversberg have not pursued the kind of lavish player spending traditionally associated with that model. Their sporting rise has still depended heavily on low-cost recruitment, loans and player development. The URSAPHARM Arena remains a suspiciously nice, but not an ostentatious sporting palace. For now, it all falls under the category of a local labor of love.

If this club gets established in the Bundesliga, outspends its rivals, and moves to Saarbrücken, we’ve got problems.

SV Elversberg

The stories attached to the club – such as trainer Vincent Wagner being a former primary school teacher who likes to drop “Cool Runnings” references – nevertheless do lose some of their luster when one considers the fact that this village of some 13,000 inhabitants wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar without the help of the local patron. The next section outlines how Elversberg are stretching their budget (and our tolerance) this time around.

Major personnel shifts, Elversberg

Estimated Summer Transfer Balance = -€12.1m

For all the understandable noise surrounding Elversberg’s arrival in the Bundesliga, sporting director Christian Weber and Vincent Wagner have done something rather un-Elversberg-like without actually behaving unlike Elversberg at all. They spent money. Quite a lot of it by the standards of the smallest Bundesliga location. Despite having the backing of a local patron, SVE ran either a transfer surplus or a small deficit in the seven years that have seen them jump three tiers. Again, if one wishes to contrast that with Hopp, there really is no comparison.

The promotion team remains almost entirely intact. Bambasé Conté constitutes the only semi-painful starting-XI loss after returning to Hoffenheim, while Immanuel Pherai’s loan also ended. Carlo Sickinger left for Darmstadt, Mohammad Mahmoud moved to Austria Salzburg and some peripheral squad players departed without generating transfer income. Otherwise, the basic skeleton that climbed out of the 2. Bundesliga remains in place. Nicolas Kristof, Lukas Pinckert, Maximilian Rohr, Lasse Günther, Łukasz Poręba and Lukas Petkov all survive as central pieces of Wagner’s machinery.

Elversberg have nevertheless spent a listed €12.1m on incoming transfer and loan fees. More revealing than the total is where the money went. Cole Campbell cost €6m. Maurice Krattenmacher cost €2m. Francis Onyeka and Noah Darvich each arrived on €750,000 loan deals. Noel Futkeu’s loan from Eintracht Frankfurt costs another €1m. Add the €1.6m permanent purchase of Poręba and virtually the entire investment consists either of retaining a proven structural player or betting heavily on young attacking talent.

Campbell, Onyeka, Darvich and Krattenmacher form the “horde” of young attacking talent meant to help SVE defy the odds. Campbell, still just 20, represents the largest individual investment. Krattenmacher gives Wagner another mobile left-sided option capable of working all across the attacking midfield. Darvich offers perhaps the cleanest pure playmaking profile between the lines. The former Barcelona academy talent entered camp behind Onyeka in the No. 10 hierarchy, but grew noticeably throughout preseason and eventually pushed himself ahead.

Onyeka remains the most fascinating piece. Christian Weber views him primarily as a box-to-box No. 8, while early projections placed him behind the striker. He can operate as a six, eight, ten, false nine or outright forward and possesses the size, running power, technical security and personality to make several of those interpretations work. That versatility initially looked especially useful given that the one glaring roster vacancy sat alongside Poręba in defensive midfield. Felix Keidel’s emergence there later in camp changed that equation considerably. Poręba himself requires no such discussion. Making his HSV loan permanent for €1.6m was arguably the safest transaction of the summer.

Farther back, Luca Sirch could prove one of the window’s sneakiest pieces of business. Yes, the author is biased. The 27-year-old arrived from Kaiserslautern on a free and can work at center-back, right-back or defensive midfield. Then there’s the striker position. For much of the summer, the question seemed to be whether David Mokwa could make another absurdly rapid divisional leap. The 22-year-old required time to adapt after joining from Hoffenheim’s 3. Liga side last winter. Enter the 2. Bundesliga’s leading goalscorer from last year.

Noel Futkeu scored 19 goals and supplied three assists in 34 league appearances for Fürth last season before Frankfurt exercised a reported €1.3m buyback. Elversberg are now paying €1m to borrow him, but the timing of his arrival means he enters as the most obvious challenger rather than an automatic opening-day starter. Mokwa remains the projected first choice for now. Luca Pfeiffer supplies the enormous penalty-area alternative. Luca Schnellbacher remains the cultural institution who refuses to disappear.

Not bad for a club supposedly lacking options up front. The lack of Bundesliga experience remains impossible to ignore. Pfeiffer is essentially the only member of this squad with a meaningful body of top-flight work. Most of us who saw it (for Stuttgart and Darmstadt) can’t help but remember it by virtue of the fact that it was so terribly bad. Elversberg continue with their loan model. This time, however, it’s costing real money.

Something of a big bet here.

Notes from pre-season, Elversberg

There wasn’t much point in beginning the scouting notebook with grand tactical proclamations. Elversberg opened against Hessenliga side FC Gießen and won 5-0. Four years earlier, these clubs shared the Regionalliga Südwest. Now one of them is preparing for Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich. German football remains wonderfully ridiculous sometimes, a little like the town of Gießen itself. Luca Schnellbacher scored and assisted. David Mokwa came on and bagged a brace. Nice stuff from a two-striker set Wagner evidently found worthy of testing in the opening match.

The next test against Swiss champions FC Thun (Mauro Lustrinelli’s old haunts) provided considerably more resistance. Filimon Gerezgiher scored for the second consecutive game in a 1-1 draw, while Schnellbacher’s afternoon ended prematurely after a foul forced him off. Third-tier Viktoria Köln beat Elversberg 2-1 despite the Bundesliga newcomers beginning well and later pushing the game increasingly into the opposition half. The problem? Plenty of territory, not nearly enough incision. Köln waited, countered, and scored twice. Mokwa’s late consolation gave him three goals through the first three tests.

The response against NEC Nijmegen looked better. The 1-0 scoreline nevertheless hardly screamed excitement, particularly given that the match was 120 minutes, but Elversberg became increasingly dominant. The eventual winner came on a relatively straightforward play: A recovery in the attacking third, ball to Luca Pfeiffer, finish. Against Nijmegen, Darvich, Francis Onyeka and others wasted enough opportunities for Wagner to complain about chance conversion afterward. Bundesliga opponents aren’t likely to hand Elversberg twenty invitations per afternoon. The author took care to circle that.

Strasbourg then decided to make the whole exercise significantly more fun. The French first-division side twice equalized in the opening half, including once after an Elversberg turnover, but Wagner’s men eventually ran out 5-2 winners. Lukas Petkov supplied two assists from the right before the break. Onyeka scored his first goal. Pfeiffer headed in another. Darvich finally converted one of the many chances he carved out for himself. Felix Keidel buried a direct free kick. Schnellbacher added a goal and assist. Maurice Krattenmacher’s high recovery inside the penalty area created the fifth.

Even more encouragingly, Wagner changed virtually the entire team at halftime and the mechanisms didn’t collapse. Different names occupied the lanes, but the basic spacing remained recognizable. Strasbourg enjoyed a brief spell of pressure, then Elversberg simply resumed playing. The second half finished 3-0. For a club betting heavily on continuity and young depth rather than Bundesliga experience, that matters almost as much as the five goals.

Mallorca provided the strangest tactical lesson of the summer. After Soumahoro saw red in the 11th minute for stopping Petkov on the break, Wagner actually tried to persuade the officials to keep the game eleven-against-eleven. Apparently being handed an extra man wasn’t part of the lesson plan. He should have saved his breath. Elversberg played the advantage badly anyway.

Mallorca dropped deep, narrowed the spaces between their lines, waited for counters, and exposed another potential problem. Wagner’s side looked strangely uncomfortable trying to pry open a compact block. Once Noah Darvich was also sent off and numerical parity returned, Elversberg somehow looked sharper. Maximilian Rohr headed in a rehearsed corner routine before Onyeka gifted Mallorca the equalizer with an unforced pass inside his own box.

That mistake deserved an extra circle in the notebook. At the time, Onyeka remained a serious candidate to end up next to Łukasz Poręba rather than ahead of him. His talent is obvious. So is the risk of asking a 19-year-old attacking midfielder to solve Bundesliga-level pressure close to his own penalty area. Keidel’s later emergence in central midfield made the experiment less necessary anyway. Another big fat circle with Sharpie asterisks and a highlighter sweep. Some red ink somehow made it onto the pages of the yellow legal pad. Don’t ask the author precisely how that happened.

The final serious examination against Lorient produced perhaps the cleanest overall performance. The Saarlanders really do like playing the French. Elversberg controlled most of the match, repeatedly moved through the French pressure, and won 4-1. Poręba opened the scoring with a wonderful first-time strike. Darvich finally looked like someone converting his constant arrival in dangerous areas into tangible output. Cole Campbell hit the post, created Schnellbacher’s goal from the rebound sequence, and then scored himself off the underside of the bar.

One defensive gap still allowed Mamadou Koné to run clean through on Kristof for Lorient’s equalizer.

There it is again.

More boldfaced marks the notebook.

The actual final friendly was a 9-0 demolition of Oberliga side Auersmacher, which doesn’t demand much tactical excavation. It does, however, require mentioning that Luca Pfeiffer scored five goals before halftime. Yes, Five! Luca Pfeiffer? Sometimes it’s just time to give up and stick straws in one’s hair. Whenever football totally ceases to make sense…it’s actually a wonderful thing. The same applies to life. Some things simply aren’t meant to be analyzed, but enjoyed.

Double asterisk. Highlighter sweep. Sharpie underline.

Done.

Winners from camp, Elversberg

Luca Schnellbacher, CF/SS

Great name. An even greater story. Though they hardly share the same narrative, Schnellbacher is effectively Elversberg’s ‘Albert Millgramm hook’. The 32-year-old has been around since 2020, meaning that he has personally ridden this thing from the Regionalliga all the way into the Bundesliga. Three promotions. Four divisions. One increasingly absurd little football club. When roughly 1,000 supporters showed up for Elversberg’s first preseason session, Schnellbacher couldn’t resist pointing out that there were times after he first arrived when the club didn’t draw that many people for an actual home match. Now the same striker who once helped drag SVE out of the fourth tier gets to contemplate trips to Dortmund and Munich.

Schnellbacher loves his obscure little Saarland oddity. When injuries keep him out, he has even been known to stand in the fan block and belt out the songs rather than sit around twiddling his thumbs in the prawn sandwich section. A career that once took him from Eintracht Frankfurt’s youth setup through successive relegations with Aalen and Münster somehow deposited him in Elversberg, where old teammate Ole Book gave him another chance. Six years later, the former lower-league striker is finally a Bundesliga player. Sometimes the hook doesn’t need much embellishment. The story already did all the work.

The nostalgic hook isn’t the only reason he lands in the winners column. Schnellbacher scored and assisted against Gießen, added another goal and assist against Strasbourg, and converted again against Lorient after Campbell struck the post. The Thun knock briefly interrupted his summer, but whenever Wagner got him back onto the pitch, the old man kept making himself relevant. Futkeu, Mokwa and the suddenly reborn Pfeiffer may occupy more exciting places in the striker hierarchy. Fine. Schnellbacher has spent six years surviving every version of Elversberg anyway.

Luca Pfeiffer, CF/SS

We have to spend just a bit more time here. Pfeiffer enters this season with 43 top-flight appearances for Stuttgart and Darmstadt. He’s scored one lousy goal. A metatarsal fracture, prolonged illness and other injury problems meant that, entering this summer, Pfeiffer hadn’t completed a full 90 minutes in more than two years. After Elversberg signed him away from KSC last summer, he logged a grand total of 16 minutes all of last season in two April relief appearances. Now he appears to simply be having fun. Perhaps the 29-year-old realizes he simply has nothing left to lose at this point. Seriously. FIVE GOALS BEFORE HALFTIME? LUCA PFEIFFER?! The author, upon noting this name on the roster, thought the jokes would be writing themselves this season.

Noel Futkeu’s arrival definitely complicates matters. The raw talent of this exceedingly tall Badener nevertheless means he can still theoretically break through at any time. He did put together that 17-goal season, albeit in the 2. Bundesliga, for Darmstadt one year. It’s entirely plausible that Pfeiffer spends plenty of time on the bench texting Simon Terodde about how much fun it is to watch Bundesliga matches live in the stadium. The author simply had to give him his own section. A man who barely played competitive football for two years is entitled to it. He’s also permitted to enjoy whatever football he’s permitted to play. Luca Pfeiffer. Some world we live in. Good luck to you, sir!

Noah Darvich, ATTM

Darvich exits camp as one of the clearest winners among Elversberg’s young attacking additions. The Stuttgart loanee began summer as competition for Francis Onyeka, but steadily pushed himself toward the center of Wagner’s plans by repeatedly finding dangerous pockets, scoring against Strasbourg and then converting a strong Lorient performance into tangible production with Keidel supplying the assist for his 2-1 goal. The Mallorca red card belongs in the file, but it hardly derailed the broader trajectory. More importantly, the latest reporting now identifies Darvich as one of SVE’s preseason standouts and expects him to help fill the playmaker role, with a DFB-Pokal start against Duisburg already looking likely. What began as a high-upside depth move increasingly looks like a genuine claim on the No. 10 shirt.

Lukas Petkov, RW

Less a breakout winner than an incumbent who successfully defended his territory. Petkov entered summer with 13 goals and eight assists from the promotion campaign already in his pocket, yet Elversberg still spent heavily enough on young attacking talent to make absolutely no one’s place feel sacred. His response was suitably uncomplicated. Stay useful. Stay dangerous. Stay in the team. Two assists against Strasbourg supplied the clearest reminder of why Wagner still projects him as the starter on the right, while his break against Mallorca was dangerous enough to induce Soumahoro’s early red card. Campbell, Krattenmacher and Darvich may eventually rearrange the attacking furniture. Petkov spent camp making sure nobody moved his chair.

Felix Keidel, CM

Keidel may be the most conventional winner of the lot. He entered camp as a useful fullback and appears to leave it as Poręba’s starting partner. The 23-year-old spent all of last season’s league minutes on the outside, but central midfield isn’t actually foreign territory; he played there regularly for Ingolstadt before an absence elsewhere pushed him to fullback. Wagner rediscovered the old role and Keidel rewarded him with a direct free kick against Strasbourg and the assist for Darvich against Lorient. His stamina, duel strength and overview suddenly solve a problem Elversberg spent most of the summer trying to answer. Sometimes the new signing is already in the building.

Luca Sirch, CB

For those keeping track, that’s three “Luca”s, one “Lukas”, and one “Lukasz”. What the hell is going on here? Is this a team or a canonical Christian gospel? Anyway, Sirch may be the least glamorous winner on the board, which is probably exactly why Wagner will like him. Central defense remains his natural home, but Wagner inspected him at right-back almost immediately. He also worked in defensive midfield. Sirch doesn’t necessarily have to displace his defensive competitors to be useful. The former FCK man will keep appearing on team sheets because the coach always has another problem for him to solve.

Losers from camp, Elversberg

Francis Onyeka, ATTM/CM

Onyeka might be the most surprising loser of Elversberg’s camp because he entered it looking like the obvious solution to the Conté problem. The Leverkusen loanee possessed the versatility to play as a six, eight or ten, scored against Strasbourg and initially sat atop the playmaker hierarchy, but the summer kept producing competitors for every version of his role. Darvich steadily forced his way toward the No. 10 job, while Felix Keidel’s unexpected conversion back into central midfield now appears to have supplied Wagner with a preferred partner for Poręba. Then came Mallorca, where Onyeka’s dreadful unforced pass inside his own box gifted the equalizer and provided a rather vivid warning against simply dropping a 19-year-old attacker deeper because the team sheet has room there. None of this diminishes the talent. It does mean that a player who entered camp with two plausible starting positions may leave it without owning either one.

Maurice Krattenmacher, LW/ATTM

Krattenmacher exits the summer without a chair when the music stops. The 21-year-old arrived as one of Elversberg’s most intriguing attacking additions, capable of working from the left or drifting into central spaces, and his high recovery helped create the fifth goal against Strasbourg. Unfortunately, Campbell now appears to have claimed the left, Darvich has forced his way toward the No. 10 role and Petkov remains firmly established on the opposite flank. Krattenmacher still offers enough versatility to become useful very quickly, but preseason was supposed to establish where that usefulness begins. For now, the answer appears to be from the bench.

Amara Condé, DM

Condé enters the losers column because Elversberg spent an entire summer trying to answer the question of who partners Poręba and never arrived at his name. The 29-year-old remains the most experienced internal option and knows Wagner’s football, but familiarity alone hasn’t been enough to secure the second six role. The decisive development came from Felix Keidel, who moved in from fullback during preparation and now appears set alongside Poręba. Sirch and Onyeka remain alternative solutions, but Condé entered camp with an open starting position sitting directly in front of him and watched someone else claim it. For a veteran on a squad this young, that’s a missed opportunity.

Tactical Scout, Elversberg

Enough with the highlighters. Back to the white board. Wagner’s basic reference remains the 4-2-3-1, even if preseason again demonstrated that the numbers only describe where everyone stands before the football starts moving. Wagner has experimented with two-striker sets and different attacking combinations, but the underlying principles survived almost every personnel change he made during camp. The latest hierarchy makes one previously enormous question considerably easier to answer.

Felix Keidel now looks set to start alongside Łukasz Poręba.

Lineup–SVE (PROJECTED)

That midfield suddenly looks far more balanced than the more adventurous Poręba-Onyeka experiment. Poręba remains the positional anchor and first reference underneath possession. Keidel supplies more natural defensive work beside him without reducing the entire midfield to two stay-at-home screeners. He can step forward, carry some of the running burden and still recover into the structure when Günther or Gyamerah advance. Amara Condé consequently falls backward in the hierarchy, while Onyeka no longer needs to be forced into a deeper role merely because nobody else has claimed it.

The latter development has another consequence. Darvich gets the ten slot. He began summer as the challenger to Onyeka and finished it looking increasingly like the cleaner playmaking solution. His movement into dangerous pockets was evident throughout camp. The Strasbourg goal finally rewarded some of those arrivals and the Lorient performance provided more evidence that Wagner can entrust him with the central creative role. The latest expectation of a Pokal start against Duisburg merely strengthens the impression that the hierarchy has turned.

The same applies on the left. Campbell’s €6m arrival always made him impossible to ignore, but the more important development is that he now appears to have actually won the position. Petkov remains the established right-sided starter after an excellent promotion season and another productive camp. Campbell gives Wagner something different opposite him: more direct one-on-one aggression, acceleration and the willingness to attack a defender rather than simply connect around one. Zimmerschied remains useful, but the most current evidence points toward Campbell opening the season ahead of him.

Up front, Mokwa keeps the projected opening-day job for now. That’s worth emphasizing because almost everything that happened during camp seemed designed to complicate his life. He scored three times in the opening three tests, then watched Pfeiffer erupt for seven preseason goals before Elversberg added last season’s 2. Bundesliga leading scorer Futkeu on loan. Mokwa nevertheless knows Wagner’s football and presently remains the safest projection until Futkeu has actually been integrated.

The wider tactical concern remains exactly where all those notebook circles kept appearing. Elversberg can look lovely when the first phase succeeds. Kristof plays short, the center-backs spread, Keidel and Poręba offer central exits, the fullbacks climb and Darvich moves into the pocket underneath Mokwa. Petkov and Campbell can then attack from opposite sides while the entire structure stretches the opponent vertically and horizontally. Strasbourg showed how difficult that can be to contain. Lorient showed that Elversberg can even play through stronger pressure cleanly.

Lose the ball, though, and the picture becomes considerably uglier. Viktoria Köln waited for turnovers and countered. Strasbourg found an equalizer after another giveaway. Lorient needed one clean gap to send Mamadou Koné straight through on Kristof. Poręba and Keidel will have enormous responsibility for controlling the space underneath them. It seems a decent midfield arrangement, though not exactly a proven one.

That also explains why Sirch may play much more often than this projected XI suggests. He can cover center-back, right-back and defensive midfield, giving Wagner an easy way to harden the structure without abandoning the possession model. The important thing is that Elversberg no longer enter the season with quite as many unanswered positional questions as they appeared to possess in July. Keidel has emerged beside Poręba. Darvich has pushed toward the ten. Campbell has moved ahead on the left. Mokwa survives at striker for now.

So the broad picture looks surprisingly coherent: for now, 4-2-3-1. Poręba and Keidel underneath. Petkov and Campbell attacking from the flanks. Darvich creating between them. Mokwa stretching the line. The names will rotate and the shape will occasionally mutate, but the principles aren’t particularly mysterious. Elversberg want to play football. That they will certainly get a chance to do.

It would make for a nice story if the existing backbone of this team (and not the higher-profile loanees) plays the more significant role in keeping the team in the Bundesliga. In point of fact, this team needs such stories if they don’t wish to get onto the blacklists of Bundesliga enthusiasts. We’re okay with it for now. Nothing inherently wrong with a “Graue Maus” that has a slight weight advantage over the rest.

Just don’t pump this mouse full of steroids and expect us not to notice.

GGFN | Peter Weis