Best second-half team: Can HSV's quality topple BVB? | OneFootball

This weekend, HSV faces one of the toughest games of the season. The away match at Borussia Dortmund is coming up!

Head coach Merlin Polzin described the task as an "absolute challenge" in an interview, which awaits his team on Saturday evening (6:30 PM, Sky) at Signal Iduna Park. "We're up against a Dortmund team that has already collected more points than in the entire previous season. They've only lost two games, and those were against Bayern," said Polzin.

However, HSV knows how to trouble BVB. In the first leg at the Volksparkstadion, the northern club celebrated an unexpected point thanks to a last-second goal by Ransford Königsdörffer.

A similar surprise is now hoped for on foreign soil. "We've conducted a good analysis," explained Polzin, "and we especially want to occupy certain spaces better and make better decisions in transition play after winning the ball. That would have been possible in the past weeks as well."

Photo: Getty Images

HSV: "We are committed to a clear idea"

In fact, there are two aspects that can give HSV justified hope before the mammoth task against the German vice-champion. Firstly, the team seems to have increasingly overcome their significant away weakness from the first half of the season. Regardless of their own Volksparkstadion, they are "getting better and better at focusing entirely on each individual game," praises Polzin.

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Secondly, along with VfB Stuttgart and Bayer Leverkusen, the Rothosen have the best second-half defense of all Bundesliga teams so far. In nine encounters, HSV has conceded only nine goals.

Polzin describes his team's core quality as follows: "After promotion, we committed to a very clear idea of how we want to achieve our goal: When you're a promoted team, it's about defending your own goal well. Since the 4th matchday, when the team was complete, we've been showing extremely stable performances. You can see that our intention is to score as many goals as possible, but to do so in a healthy balance." It is precisely this balance that should now also prevail against BVB.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.