SV Bonlanden is a Sunday League club in the greater Stuttgart area.
They currently play in the second-to-last division of organised German football.
I’m currently working five minutes away from their training ground and it’s absolutely beautiful there, but the club is still irrelevant to world football, or is it?
The club’s decent infrastructure is due to its 15-year history in the Oberliga, the fifth German division.
The former Bonladen manager, Norbert Stippel, whom I’ve worked under previously, made a huge decision in 2010 to hire Alexander Blessin as a player-assistant manager.
After Red Bull bought a club in Leipzig, it decided to implement Ralf Rangnick’s philosophy there as well.
It hired many youth coaches from the Stuttgart area, where Rangnick is from, to work in its academy, and Blessin was one of those coaches.
After many years as Robert Klaußs assistant, Blessin ultimately became the head coach of the U17 and, a year later, the U19 teams.
In 2020, the then-47-year-old manager decided to take his first step into professional football.
He became manager of KV Oostende in Belgium and finished fifth in his debut season with the small club.
After an unsuccessful stint at FC Genoa in Italy, Blessin returned to Belgium in 2023.
He went on to manage Royal Union Saint-Gilloise, where he won his first silverware.
At the same time, after getting promoted, Hamburg-based FC St. Pauli lost their young manager, Fabian Hürzeler, to Premier League Brighton & Hove Albion and were, therefore, looking for a new man on the sideline.
They ultimately decided to hire Blessin.
After losing not only their coach but also three very important players, Eric da Silva Moreira (Nottingham Forest), Marcel Hartel (St. Louis), and Aljoscha Kemlein (Union Berlin), the club faced a harsh season in the German top flight.
Still, Blessin is managing to keep his team out of the relegation zone.
After 14 games, they are currently in 15th place in the Bundesliga.
In this tactical analysis and head coach analysis, we will examine the type of football Blessin has brought to St. Pauli, which is very good even at the Bundesliga level, and what struggles are holding them back from being in a better position heading into the winter break.
Pressing Mastermind
As stated in the opening part of this piece, Alexander Blessin spent the majority of his learning years at RB Leipzig, where he was exposed to the Rangnick idea of football with high intensity and a focus on counter-pressing immediately after a loss.
Blessin has brought many Red Bull-influenced ideas to his team, especially at his first club in the mens game.
In an interview on the official club website, he stated that he does not value much control in possession but rather prefers intensity and pressing against the ball as the key parts of his philosophy.
While many coaches say things like that, especially when they have a past at a Red Bull club, they are often unable to press their team in games effectively.
Overall, the focus on the work against the ball can be seen in the way St. Pauli is playing so far this season.
With just under 19 expected goals against, Blessin’s men rank fifth in the Bundesliga in that regard, which shows their proficiency in defending.
Interestingly enough, the team ranks below average in passes per defensive action and challenge intensity, but this is explained by the fact that the team is defending very well in a deep block on a regular base.
Still, what sets St. Pauli apart from other teams in the Bundesliga this season is their very active approach against the ball.
Even while defending in a deeper block, the team still always has a clear plan of how, when, where and whom to press in every situation that happens during the game.
Blessin always prepares the St. Pauli players very well.
They always make multiple tiny adjustments in their press that allow them to be effective against a variety of ideas that Bundesliga coaches have implemented in their teams build-up play.
This was once again evident during the 90 minutes of their game against Werder Bremen.
Werder Bremen is a team that prefers to build up with a lot of short passes, keeping passing distances low and involving their goalkeeper heavily in their passing game.
As we can see, Werder is stretching out their defensive line to create a back-four in these situations, creating a numbers advantage in the first line of play against St. Pauli’s 3-4-3 formation.
Werder now open the play with a pass to one of their centre-backs, simultaneously triggering St. Paulis attacking press.
There are now multiple t
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