Regionalliga Bayern: Aschaffenburg outsider

The coaches of the Bayern Regional Football League, which will resume play this Thursday (6.30 p.m.) with the opening game between TSV Aubstadt and SpVgg Unterhaching, agree: The division is stronger than ever. This is due to the unusually large number of candidates for the championship and this time direct promotion, and there is also agreement on these. 19 of the 20 trainers each trust the defending champion 1. FC Schweinfurt 05 and the two relegated from the third division, FC Bayern Munich II and SpVgg Unterhaching, to the title and promotion. The SpVgg Oberfranken Bayreuth is also very popular with 16 votes. As an outsider, SV Viktoria Aschaffenburg entered the race with four votes.

FC Bayern Munich II

On the campus of FC Bayern Munich he often hears the word “stress”, reports Martin Demichelis. “For me, however, football is not stressful,” says the record champions’ former professional who, somewhat surprisingly, was appointed sole head coach of the U23 during the summer break after relegating from the third division. He’s letting everything come his way, says the 40-year-old, and he has to: He doesn’t even know the regional league yet, and he has no idea which players he will travel to FC Augsburg II with on Saturday. Julian Nagelsmann has borrowed virtually all potential U-23 regular players because most of his own squad is on vacation at the European Championship. De facto Demichelis is currently a U19 coach, especially since he is missing one of the three veterans in Maximilian Welzmüller at the beginning. The planned goalkeeper Lukas Schneller has also injured himself.

If you then also consider which players have left the club – Angelo Stiller, Lasse Günther, Nicolas Kühn or the young defender Justin Che from cooperation partner Dallas FC, who is currently playing in Major League Soccer – one wonders why the young Bavarians are actually traded as favorites. Demichelis himself gives the answer: In his career at FC Bayern and Manchester City, he was never just about winning games, but championships. And he doesn’t feel like standing deep, his team should dominate. So, after all, the goal of recovery? “Check back in six weeks.” By then, the grossest improvisation may be over.

FC Schweinfurt 05

The tears of the players and coaches had not yet dried when the sports director of FC Schweinfurt, still standing on the TSV Havelse lawn, declared the goal for the coming months. “We want to defend the title. Exclamation mark,” said Robert Hettich after the lost promotion relegation. It is quickly forgotten that the Schnüdel have become regional league champions after all. They are already a candidate for the title because, first of all, they dominated Aschaffenburg and Bayreuth on the way there. And secondly, because they should be more well-rehearsed at the start of the season than most of their competitors.

The only question in Schweinfurt is: How willing is the willingness to start again from scratch? It has now been four weeks since the team ultimately narrowly failed at the Lower Saxony. Via Havelse, that would have been the fastest way to the third division. Not only because at the start of the new season you have to travel more than 300 kilometers to TSV Buchbach (and Schalding-Heining is almost as far as Havelse). But also because there is no stony, but a long, paved road waiting for the Lower Franconia, with thousands of kilometers over Bavaria’s motorways and country roads. Coach Tobias Strobl and Hettich have an advantage over several competitors: They know the Regionalliga very well. The latter says: In the games against the supposedly little ones, the championship is won. The most important players are still there, the squad has been refreshed with some talents.

SpVgg Bayreuth

December is still a long way off, and yet there is already a festive atmosphere at SpVgg Bayreuth. That this transfer worked, “is a bit like Christmas,” said SpVgg managing director Wolfgang Gruber recently when Bayreuth signed Benedikt Kirsch. After Felix Weber, ex-captain of TSV 1860 Munich, and Daniel Steininger, the former Türkgücü player was the third well-known player engagement that caused a lot of euphoria. The trio not only has a lot of experience, but should also provide new impulses in terms of mentality.

The regional league competition is impressed. Bayreuth has strengthened itself very well, said ex-Bayern professional Martin Demichelis, who is now coaching Bayern II. That’s why he has the SpVgg on his promotion slip. Eichstätts coach Markus Mattes describes the Bayreuthers as “championship candidates” alongside Bayern II because the club has “positioned itself more and more professionally”. The SpVgg is even talked about in the Bundesliga. At least with Arminia Bielefeld, who will be visiting Bayreuth on August 7th in the first round of the DFB Cup and whose coach Frank Kramer said: “There could have been more pleasant lots.”

The SpVgg itself formulates its season goal again conservatively despite the external praise. After last season, which ended in the playoffs for first place in the league, under the motto “Everything can, nothing has to”, coach Timo Rost now says: “We want to play at the top again in a very strong league . ” But managing director Gruber cannot hide the fact that the “responsibility to achieve more” is definitely there.

Viktoria Aschaffenburg

It doesn’t take too much to tell Jochen Seitz that his team will be one of the favorites for the coming season. Basically, it is enough to hold the table from last season under the nose of the Aschaffenburg coach. Well, the table doesn’t show the whole season because it was canceled at the end – but lo and behold: Viktoria is right at the top.

Seitz, 44, has secretly composed a team over the past two years that was better than she knew herself. Suddenly the Aschaffenburgers also won against the good guys and were suddenly so good themselves that they not only annoyed more potent comrades-in-arms like Schweinfurt and Bayreuth, but drove them to white heat. Is it all just a freak of nature? No, says Seitz: “A lot of factors came together. We were in top shape and had self-confidence. That’s how we got into a run.” This run led his team to the top, but Seitz now says: “Repeating that will be extremely difficult. To even demand it would be utopian and would not do the young team justice.”

With Marcel Schelle, an important player has left after only nine games for Viktoria, and with Simon Schmidt, the leader par excellence has said goodbye after twelve years at Schönbusch. Two losses that may not only make the team worse than they think, but also open a hierarchical gap. These should be closed by the former Lübeck-based Nicolas Hebisch and Max Grün. As a substitute goalkeeper in Wolfsburg, Darmstadt and Mönchengladbach, Grün has only played 22 competitive games in the past eight years, but Seitz says: “We can expect a lot from Max.” Perhaps so much that Viktoria is also better this year than she thinks.

SpVgg Unterhaching

When today’s Aschaffenburg coach Seitz was still playing as a professional in Haching, the game association in the first division and the media interest was huge. In the meantime, the club has crashed into fourth class for the second time since 2015. And yet there were almost as many reporters in the sports park recently as there were 20 years ago in Bundesliga times. This is due to the new head coach Sandro Wagner, who, as a television expert at the European Championships, received positive reviews and a lot of popularity and has now been entrusted by President Manfred Schwabl with the task of leading the club back into the third division.

The fact that the promotion is not an absolute must in the first year was a basic requirement for Wagner to accept his first coaching job in the men’s area. Because it will be complicated to form a largely new team. In the president’s son Markus Schwabl, midfielder Dominik Stahl, defender Josef Welzmüller and striker Stephan Hain, only four veterans from the third division squad remained – the last three, however, had to struggle with serious injuries recently. “This axis is incredibly important, we need these guys,” says Sandro Wagner.

The others who have stayed are all hopeful talents, the majority come directly from their own youth. As far as external access is concerned, only goalkeeper Alexander Weidinger (Jahn Regensburg), as well as the attackers José Pierre Vunguidica (1. FC Saarbrücken) and Patrick Hobsch (VfB Lübeck) are still on the lookout for a defender and a midfielder. When asked about the numerous promotion favorites, Wagner remains completely calm: “I don’t care whether a strong opponent is more or less in the league. The others may have more reason to go up straight away. We’ll be very relaxed.”