St. Pauli: xG and Germany's Jekyll and Hyde
Modern off the pitch, now modern on it as well? But St. Pauli have one huge demon to deal with.
But that doesn’t have to be a reason for managerial changes, sometimes these things just take time. Like at FC Sankt Pauli, who have had an instructive 2021 in that regard but now face their peculiar demon of never showing consistency when it comes to calendar year performances. Next up for them: Borussia Dortmund.
St. Pauli and Timo Schultz go back further than most. As a player, Schultz was part of the club’s last promotion to the top tier (and last 1. Bundesliga season) as well as the run to the DFB Pokal semi-finals in 2006. Now, after time coaching the club’s youth and working as an assistant under various head coaches, he is in charge of the first team and has led them to top of the 2. Bundesliga table and their first last 16 appearance in the cup since that run to the final four 16 years ago.
Nobody would’ve called this 12 months ago. Having taken over from Jos Luhukay, Schultz’s first half season was, from the outside, fairly disastrous. St. Pauli were 17th in the table, in a relegation spot. They won just one of their opening 15 games of the season. But the club didn’t panic and nor did Schultz.
“We were in the bottom three even though, along with Greuther Fürth, we’d had the most shots on goal. I find expected goals a helpful value to understand where you really are, it can give another perspective,” he recently told German football magazine 11Freunde.
St. Pauli went from picking up 26 points (five wins) in 28 league matches in 2020 to picking up 75 points (23 wins) in 30 league matches in 2021. But Schultz has one more hurdle, a psychological one, that he might have to overcome.
But nobody can ever predict what an upcoming year will look like for the club. A worrying (and incredible trend) of playing Jekyll and Hyde seasons has followed the club around in recent seasons. 2022 started in the same vein as the league leaders kicked off the year with a draw against lowly Erzgebirge Aue. In five of the last eight campaigns, St. Pauli have played as title contenders for half a season and relegation candidates for the other half.
The difference is not just remarkable but has no rhyme or reason to it. Somehow, the Hamburg club have ended practically year for the last decade as relegation candidates or title contenders before ending up in the no man’s land of midtable by the end of the campaign.
Schultz has helped the team turn plenty of corners in his time in charge already and the casual nod to expected goals in conversation suggests a club known for its modern, forward-thinking approach in the community could finally be taking a similar approach to make progress on the pitch.
St. Pauli must be one of the world’s most well-known second tier clubs, gathering fans worldwide for their support in the LGBTQ+ community and refugees amongst other things. The club loudly and proudly opposes those who marginalise the marginalised.
“Kein Mensch ist Illegal” (“no person is illegal”) adorns the wall behind one of the goals at their Millerntor stadium, where the club shop stocks “Kein Wein den Faschisten” (“No wine for fascists”) wine and wine glasses.
It’s long overdue that the club’s uplifting moral compass off the pitch is mirrored by a team that can inspire belief.
Alongside his passing mention of expected goals, Schultz made the choice to appoint Loic Favé and Fabian Hürzeler, two 28-year-olds, as his assistants as he stepped into the head coach position. In his words, the club wanted to refresh with new faces in an attempt to be more “fit for the future” and “need young colleagues with creative ideas” to achieve that.
It is clearly working.
From October 2019 to January 2021, St. Pauli won 35 points from 38 2. Bundesliga matches. Schultz was in charge for more than a third of those matches but, crucially, did not have Guido Burgstaller available as the Kiezkicker went 13 games without a win.
“And then Burgstaller was fit and scored the opener seven times in the next nine games,” Schultz said.
“You can’t take yourself so seriously as the coach, sometimes it’s a case of: either Guido Burgstaller is on the pitch, or he isn’t.”
Burgstaller has continued his fine form in 2021/22 — no player has more than his 14 goals in the 2. Bundesliga so far this season — and is central to the club’s offensive approach. After just over a year of the dull, negative football seen under Jos Luhukay, Schultz has made it a priority to entertain the fans. St. Pauli have become a more offensive side, a better defensive side, and a team that keeps the ball on the ground more than basically any other in the division.
“Our fans like that. They want to see a team that is brave, bold, and gets forward aggressively.
“A 4-4-2 that moves from side to side and luckily wins 1-0, that doesn’t fit at St. Pauli. And the current team is too good for that. But we also don’t play gung-ho, right now [near the end of November] we have the second best defence in the league.”
Almost the entire team has changed since a poor 2019/20 season, with defender Luca Zander the only player still featuring regularly from the players that were consistently picked back then. Others (James Lawrence, Sebastian Ohlsson, Rico Benatelli, Finn Becker) remain but aren’t playing much and Schultz is entirely justified. Marcel Hartel and Jackson Irvine are superb driving forces at either side of a diamond, Daniel-Kofi Kyereh drifts from flank to flank at the tip of that shape, and Burgstaller is the main man in the frontline.
Whether or not Schultz and co. can end that trend of following brilliant years with dreadful ones remains to be seen. This week all eyes will be on the Pokal and the visit of Borussia Dortmund. And St. Pauli will be smelling an upset before continuing their fight to go up.