Werder Bremen announced the departure of head coach Horst Steffen over the weekend, bringing an abrupt end to the tactical experiment that began with his 2025 summer appointment.
After a run of 10 league matches without a win, a slide that saw the Grün-Weißen perilously close to the relegation zone, the club’s board concluded that the coaching ticket had to change.
Steffen’s tenure was always marked by dual challenges: integrating his footballing ideas and tactical identity into a squad grappling with injuries and inconsistency, while simultaneously delivering results in a highly competitive Bundesliga landscape.
Werder’s patterns of play notably struggled to translate possession into incisive forward action.
The 1–1 draw against Borussia Mönchengladbach, Werder’s 10th game without a victory, underscored the deeper structural issues that the coaching staff were unable to resolve.
The interim stewardship of Raphael Duarte and Christian Groß sets the stage for an internal reset, even as the club searches for a long-term solution.
In this Werder Bremen tactical analysis, we examine the clubs reassessment of tactical direction, squad cohesion, and competitive identity during a season when the margins for survival are thin.
Pre-Christmas: Problems In Line 1 All Around
Considering Horst Steffens tenure at Werder Bremen, we must examine two phases in the coaching staffs approach to games.
Pre-Christmas, Steffen brought his usual approach, which had made him incredibly successful in Elversberg over the last couple of years, to the team and tried to implement a change from a 3-4-2-1 formation to a 4-2-3-1 formation.
Overall, the situation has not been ideal for Steffen; the discrepancy between what he wanted (or was hired to do) and what Werder were doing in the three seasons before was significant, and the squad was not well-suited to the new style of play.
Additions from the transfer market either arrived late or were of no help at all this season.
I don’t think the performances plummeted over the last couple of weeks.
Werder have had some major issues so far this season.
They had some more luck in the first half of the season, and the results were a tad better, but the problems have been there for more than just a month now.
One of the biggest issues is their play when they either faced a high press or had to play with a high press themselves.
Looking at the way they pressed before Christmas, Steffen tried to implement his collective approach to defending.
The press was very focused on keeping distances close, and players orientation was more focused on space and the distance between teammates than on the opposing players.
This caused signific
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