If you had asked 100 German football fans in 2018 if they knew about SV Elversberg, the majority would have had no clue about the small club from the Saarland, a region located near the French border in Germany.
In October 2018, the club made two huge decisions that would shape its future.
Nils-Ole Book was appointed sporting director at the club, and the new sporting director hired Horst Steffen as a new coach.
Steffen was a professional player himself, having made a considerable number of appearances in the Bundesliga.
He’d already had a decent amount of coaching experience, starting out as a youth coach for MSV Duisburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach before coaching multiple clubs in the 3. Liga in Germany, with a rather bleak amount of success.
With their new sporting director and coach, Elversberg established itself as a top team in the Regionalliga.
They finally got promoted to the 3. Liga in 2022, instantly winning the league in their first season there.
They then got a promotion to the 2. Bundesliga, where they finished in third place and lost in the relegation play-off this season.
What’s even more impressive is how they have done it.
There were no major spending or signings, and many players from the Regionalliga team are still part of today’s squad.
With a very young team, Steffen still managed to have his team play breathtaking, attacking football.
Elversberg’s strategy revolved around Steffen developing players and working with young players.
Nick Woltemade, Paul Wanner, and, more recently, Muhammed Damar, Elias Baum, and Fisnik Asllani all came to Elversberg as loan players with little to no experience in professional football and quickly developed into top players.
This success did not go unnoticed.
After a very successful season in the Bundesliga, Werder Bremen and their head coach, Ole Werner, decided to part ways due to different opinions about the club’s future.
Werner wanted instant success, and Werder’s board wants to build around their academy players and young talents.
Therefore, Werder Bremen’s sporting director, Clemens Fritz, decided to bring in Horst Steffen to guide the club into its future revolving around their talented young players.
In this tactical analysis and head coach analysis, we will examine what Horst Steffen did at Elversberg, how it will fit at Werder Bremen, and what we can expect from the team going into next season.
Listen to this article free on the Total Football Analysis Podcast via Spotify, Apple Podcast, or RSS.
Horst Steffen Style Of Build Up
Looking at what Werder Bremen did this season, it was rather impressive how diverse their approach to games was.
Ole Werner was a great coach in terms of pragmatism.
He was always able to tweak his system and approach according to his team’s situation and their opponent without compromising their own identity.
Horst Steffen is an entirely different type of coach.
He has a clear idea of how he wants to play football and expects his team to follow his plan and principles even against stronger opponents.
One significant change that the new coach will bring to Bremen is the switch to a back-four formation, which differs from the back-three formation that Werder Bremen has used under Ole Werner for the past three and a half years.
While Werder had some situations in which they would shape up with a back-four as well in the build-up, it will still be a significant change for the team.
In the picture above, we can see the shape and structure that Horst Steffen prefers while building out from the back.
Steffen usually lines up his team in a 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-2 formation, and it’s pretty obvious in all four phases of the game.
Elversberg involved their goalkeeper heavily in their build-up play, and that will be something that Steffen can take over at Werder Bremen.
Michael Zetterer is excellent with the ball at his feet for a goalkeeper, and Werner used that as well this season.
The backline then spreads out very wide, providing the width in possession for Elversberg.
The two full-backs are near the sideline and push up the field most of the time, but they can also be at the same height as the centre-backs against teams with a very high pressing approach to secure shorter passing distances.
This is intended to spread out the defending team’s block, opening up vertical passing options.
We will take a look at that in a bit.
The two midfielders are both close to the backline and are supposed to get the ball deep in their own half.
Semih Sahin, especially, often collects the ball from his centre-backs and then tries to progress it.
Overall, the team is very patient at this stage.
Elversberg always dominated possession under Steffen and is trying to attract the opposing team’s press.
The two wingers are dropping into the half-space between the lines, allowing for vertical passing options and line-breaking passes often.
In terms of progression, Steffen values dynamic attacks.
He himself calls his football counterattacking football, because despite dominating possession, Elversberg tried to create situations in which the defence had not sorted out their positioning, and therefore their attacks are pseudo-counterattacks.
Steffen has a very fluent approach in his game; his positional play is not static at all.
He wants his players to roam freely and interchange positions, or even leave certain players out at times, to create disarray in their opponents’ defensive lines.
As we can see in the picture, striker Asllani is leaving the centre of attack to drop back into midfield, while winger Lukas Petkov is dropping even closer to the backline to lower the passing distances.
This forces Schalke’s defence to change their assignments and step up to defend completely, which Elversberg’s other players, like Baum on the right side, are using for runs in behind the backline.
Ultimately, Elversberg manage to drag the entire Schalke block out to the right side and switch play with a long ball to the left side, where left-back Maurice Neubauer positioned himself in the vacated space.
Steffen himself says that getting in the space behind the defensive line is a key to attacking success and that he never wants his team to back out of these types of situations, which is why he values presence in the box.
After Asllani left the striker position, Damar now plays up front, and the other attacking players are making runs towards the box to give their left-back multiple options to cross it.
In this situation, Neubauer simply shoots and scores the 2-0 for Elversberg against Schalke, securing their place in the relegation play-off.
The combination of patience while building up from the back and a clear plan to create vertical passing options and pseudo-counterattacks made Elversberg one of the best attacking teams in the 2. Bundesliga last season, and Steffen will definitely try to implement that style of play at Werder Bremen as well.
Freedom In The Final Third
Elversberg was arguably playing the best football out of all teams in the 2. Bundesliga last season, at least the most interesting to watch for sure.
Horst Steffen’s coaching approach is very interesting.
He doesn’t want to force his players into pre-existing shapes and principles but rather prefers them to make their own decisions on the pitch according to the situation.
It’s not like there are no clear principles.
Steffen has stated multiple times that there are clear ideas and processes in the game that players must respect, but within those boundaries, they can pretty much do as they please.
Striker Fisnik Asllani stated in an interview this season that Steffen just wants his team to play football.
He can position himself however he pleases, but he always needs to be able to impact the game and help out his teammates.
Otherwise, the players are responsible for what happens on the pitch.
This results in a very dynamic system.
The Elversverg players are always on the move, constantly shifting out of their positions and continually trying to advance, creating situations that are difficult for the opposing team to defend due to the sheer movement of the players without the ball.
Here, we can see a situation from the relegation play-off against Heidenheim a couple of weeks ago, Steffen’s second-to-last game as a coach for Elversberg.
His team progressed the ball into the final third, and from now on, things get really interesting.
Instead of having a striker in the box or at least in the final third, Elversberg pretty much plays without a striker here.
They are overloading the far side, with Asllani falling towards the right half-space.
This ends up with Elversberg switching play here and managing to do so even by having a numerical disadvantage.
Because of that, Elversberg actually loses the ball here, but they have a lot of players committed forward and therefore can engage in counterpressing quickly.
This ends with Heidenheim playing a bad pass and Sahin easily collecting that pass at the edge of the final third.
With this many players forward, Steffen’s team was able to get into power-play situations rather often.
From there on, things become interesting again.
Baum hold the width on the right side, but both wingers are again pushing inwards into the half space.
Asllani, the striker, is falling back into the attacking midfielder position, and attacking midfielder Damar is now playing as a striker.
That way, Elversberg creates a numerical advantage in the centre of the field and is now able to play a quick combination.
Sahin passes the ball outwards to the left half-space, where the winger is wide open.
Now they are once again quickly interchanging positions.
Damar now drops back into midfield again, selling the dummy to the Heidenheim defenders.
This allows for a through ball to Asllani, who is now making an unaccounted run in the space behind the defensive line out of the midfield position.
Asllani receives the ball and scores here.
Ultimately, it was not enough to win the game, but it showed the fluent positional play and quick combinations that Horst Steffen wants to see from his team in the final third.
A lot of off-the-ball movement, interchanging positions, and overloading the centre result in a beautifully played goal, and this way of playing worked for the entire season.
Defending As A Unit
Examining Horst Steffen’s approach to defending reveals several interesting points he has made over the past couple of years.
One thing that stood out to me was the story he told on a podcast about his playing career, in which he had to man-mark Andreas Möller in the Bundesliga.
With the man-marking-dominant systems of the time, he was often left alone against these types of players, and he rarely had a chance to defend against them.
Therefore, his standpoint in terms of tactics against the ball is dominated by collectivism.
Steffen wants his team to defend as a unit; if one player loses a duel, the others need to be ready to help them out.
At Elversberg, he tried to keep the distances between his players and the ball small.
Most of the time, Elversberg defended in a 4-4-2 formation, with Damar pushing forward alongside Asllani.
The midfielders were also pushing up the field, keeping the space between the lines relatively small and allowing the two strikers to press their opponents’ centre-backs.
Another thing is that they kept the width of the field uncovered.
Steffen had his team defend in a very narrow formation, especially in the midfield, which often only covered one side of the field, leaving the other side open.
For Elversberg, it was not important where they defended and triggered their press; what mattered more to them was defending collectively anywhere on the pitch, and it worked out rather well for them.
Still, Steffen has preferred a midfield press ever since being promoted to the 3. Liga three years back, and it is still completely embedded in the team to this day.
They try to get their opponent to play through one side, and the moment they step into their midfield, it is an apparent trigger for Elversberg to press aggressively.
They have great trust in each other.
The midfielders move forward quickly to put pressure on the opposing midfielders, and the defenders are also ready to defend forward, not allowing themselves to be pushed back and creating space between the lines.
With this aggressive mindset and their ability to condense space, Elversberg was very successful in winning back the balls in the middle third, and it worked really well for them.
This season, Steffen and his men only conceded 37 goals in 34 matches, an impressive improvement from last season, when they conceded 63 goals in 34 games.
On the other hand, the style of defending comes with risks.
In the second leg of the relegation play-off against Heidenheim, Elversberg attempted to defend aggressively forward in the closing minutes of the game, but was torn apart by their former player Wanner with a nice through ball that ultimately assisted in the goal that cost Elversberg promotion to the Bundesliga.
Still, I think it’s fascinating that Horst Steffen took the unpleasant experiences from his playing career and managed to build a defensive identity out of it that actually works really well in the 2. Bundesliga this season.
Conclusion
Elversberg has had the best development over the last couple of years in German football, and Horst Steffen played a massive part in that.
He took some fourth-division players and developed them into excellent 2. Bundesliga players and every young player who went to Elversberg managed to improve during the year he was there.
Players like Woltemade, Wanner and Asllani all talk very positively about their time under Horst Steffen and how well he coaches young players.
The entire approach of Steffen at Elversberg was fascinating to watch, from their very collective defensive identity to their fluent attacking style.
Steffen values teamwork and a strong work ethic from his players, and rewards them by placing a lot of trust in them during attacking play.
Steffen is what we Germans call a „Menschenfänger,” someone who is great at communicating with players, aligning all of the individuals to a collective, and actually building a team out of these individual players.
While Elversberg’s tactical performance was awe-inspiring this season, these soft skills in communication and working with young players are the reason that this style of play worked out so well and why Werder Bremen decided to hire Horst Steffen as their new coach.
Compared to Ole Werner, this represents a significant shift in the coach’s approach.
Werner liked to keep his distance from the team.
He had a very clear plan and very straightforward tasks for every player.
The entire system relied on everybody knowing exactly what to do.
With Steffen, this will change.
Will this end in success for Werder Bremen?
In terms of points, I don’t expect Steffen to perform as well as Werner did this season.
Still, in terms of developing their young talents and the attractiveness of the football the team plays, I expect Werder to be one of the most interesting teams to watch in the upcoming Bundesliga campaign.
