Marked for Sven van der Plas
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market9 Jul 2029
Anton Kade hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Heidenheim can pretend not to have heard.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Jonas Adjetey was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sven van der Plas is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Veit Stange has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Words at Heidenheim training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tim Siersleben is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Market9 Jul 2029
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Oct 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 13 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match27 Sep 2028
Mainz 05 are out and Heidenheim go through, 3‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Squad2 Oct 2028
A fracture rules Hauke Wahl out for 95 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heidenheim will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
Sven van der Plas could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.27
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.27, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.87 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market2 Oct 2028
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad2 Oct 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Patrick Mainka and Heidenheim agree another 2 years.
Squad2 Oct 2028
Patrick Mainka was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Player ratings2 Oct 2028
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.01, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market31 Jul 2028
Only the photograph left for Ahmed Azaouagh
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ahmed Azaouagh will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Heidenheim the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad31 Jul 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Heidenheim this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sven van der Plas is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.