Alexander Blessin Tactics At St. Pauli 2025/2026: Early Season Form Or Taking The Next Step In The Bundesliga? – Tactical Analysis

For the longest time, the footballing power in Hamburg was rather easily settled.

Hamburger SV was the citys biggest club, while FC St. Pauli was the little brother that no one really believed in.

Despite having a fascinating history and a fair bit of success in the 2. Bundesliga, St. Pauli never really impressed in the Bundesliga for the longest time, never playing more than three consecutive seasons in the German top flight.

When the club managed to get promoted back to the Bundesliga after 13 years in 2024, expectations were rather low for that reason.

Young head coach Fabian Hürzeler decided to leave the club after the promotion, joining Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League, and top scorer Marcel Hartel joined St. Louis in MLS, so the outlook wasn’t great.

Still, under the new coach, Alexander Blessin, St. Pauli impressed in their first season back in the Bundesliga, avoiding relegation and even fielding the second-best defence in the league, second only to champion FC Bayern.

While this meant that some of their players received interest from bigger clubs and decided to leave, it also allowed the club to really invest in its squad for the first time in years.

Now, after three matchdays, St. Pauli and Blessin sit in fourth place in the Bundesliga with seven points from those games.

They decisively beat rival Hamburger SV in their stadium.

In this St. Pauli tactical analysis, we will examine Alexander Blessin tactics at St. Pauli, what they are doing well to start the season, and what we can expect from the team moving forward.

Alexander Blessin Tactics

Looking back at last season, it was rather obvious why St. Pauli under Alexander Blessin management managed to stay up.

As stated earlier, the team conceded only 41 goals in the 34 Bundesliga matches last season, ranking second in the league behind Bayern Munich.

Of course, their defensive ability secured them most of their points.

What’s interesting about their defensive work is that, unlike how you would expect a freshly promoted team to defend, St. Pauli did not just fall behind the ball into a deep block but played with a rather efficient attacking and midfield press for most of the season.

It’s not surprising considering their coach, Blessin, comes from a Red Bull background at Leipzig and from the expanded coaching tree of Ralf Rangnick.

However, it was still interesting to see an underdog play this aggressively.

There are a lot of interesting ideas to unpack in their press, and the team once again showed their proficiency against the ball in the game against FC Augsburg last weekend.

Blessin usually lines his team up in a 3-4-3 formation, but ever since the backend of last season, he has played with a false nine in Daniel Sinani, and it even shows against the ball.

Looking at what they did against Augsburg, if they were forced to attack in the second line, the team actually shaped up in a 5-2-1-2 formation with Sinani falling back into the midfield.

The two strikers now stayed rather wide, positioning themselves in the half-space, while the now three-man midfield was playing man-coverage against the three opposing midfielders, pretty much closing off the centre of the field and even preventing vertical passes down the channel in the half-spaces.

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