Chilean superhero Miiko Albornoz days at Hannover are over



After the most ridiculous Bundesliga season we could have ever think of, it was time to start focusing on the new year to come. European football is ahead of us, and on top of that we will again be competing in both the league and the DFB-Pokal. Such was the letdown last season with a second-round exit that we need to step up and reach further stages to keep up with the team ascension.

Here is a recap of the dried summer months, in which we were able to secure a few players, had to sell a bunch of them, saw a tremendous economical improvement and have a few new sponsors featuring on the jerseys and the stadium.

Update on the Club Status

With the 2018/19 season over, the board made a quick summary of what had happened in terms of club issues regarding money, sponsors and all of the boring stuff and sent it straight to Rudi’s inbox.

As was to expect, qualifying for European competition saw the club make a splash in terms of competition prize money. That, along the sponsorship deals, make for the bulk of the income for Hannover that at the time of this writing boasts an overall balance of €48M.

The 5-year deal signed with our new sponsors is linked to and includes the numbers of both Nike (American sports apparel company) and Claro (South American telecom group). New kits were already presented (and in related news, we still are wondering why the hell Wood had the third-most sales last season in shirts. German people don’t know a thing about football, it seems).



Hannover 96 home/away/third kits for the upcoming season

All the money the board was awarded for Rudi’s accomplishments also benefited this last one, as club’s owner Martin Kind (the name fits) raised the transfer budget from last season and set it at around €18M, with a wage budget of €38M, of which only €27M are currently allocated leaving us with a wide margin to both sign new players and put competitive offers on the table.

Deals, deals, deals

As already introduced in the previous episode, we were active during the 2019 winter break to sign players both for the second half of last season and the upcoming ones (2019/20 and 2020/21). There were also a few sales and releases due to contracts getting to their end point. Let’s take a quick look.

Departures

A grand total of 10 players left the team came July with their contracts due up. The most renowned players to leave the team were Marvin Bakalorz (DM) and Edgar Prib (AML) but none of them (and the rest) ever got to play under Rudi so no big deal here.

On the real business side of things, we closed four sales. Lukas Raeder (GK, 0 apps) was a scout’s recommendation and arrived in January only to leave us six months later after non-stop moaning, going to Energie Cottbus. Pirmin Schwegler (DM, 18 apps, 6 assists) leaves for FC Basel by €1.3M. Linton Maina (AMR, 2 apps, 20 years old) will play for Hoffenheim next season on loan, and the expectations are high regarding his development. Julian Korb (WBR, 10 apps) was sold to Schalke for €5M (potentially €7.75M) after featuring quite enough as to consider him a valuable piece lost.

The most shocking of transfers was that of Miiko Albornoz (WBL, 29 apps, 1 goal, 7 assists). The Chilean was one of the best players of the team during the season, scored the goal of the campaign against FC Bayern, and from now on will set residence in Belgium and play for Club Brugge after they paid €4.7M. This came as an expected deal (there was a lot of interest in the player, it seems) yet a little unbelievable to actually see happen given the player’s role and status in the group.

Finally, we waived good bye to who seemed to be our future centerpiece Waldemar Anton. He was close to leave for Schalke 04 at the start of the summer. At the end of the season he demanded a new contract and we obliged. Just a week later, Schalke came calling with an offer we couldn’t turn down, trying to sell as high as possible (€12.75M straight, potentially up to €18.75M). Turns out, Waldemar rejected Schalke’s contract and re-up with us for the next season. The problem is just a few weeks later RB Leipzig made another offer for him at €23.5M with a 50% future profit money coming our way if he gets sold by RBL eventually. Again, I accepted the offer an this time Waldemar opted to sign with them. Sad day.

Arrivals

Thirteen players have arrived at the time of this writing, with four more coming in the near future.

We got a bargain deal in Ricardo Kishna, who comes at no cost after being released by Lazio (he was loaned to ADO for two seasons, where he played 18 games scoring three goals and dishing four assists during the last season). Martin Wagner was a pre-Rudi signing so whatever; he will probably not have room in the team and be eventually sold. Eddie Brown comes from Bolton for what I think is a stupid amount of money given the task he’ll handle as a backup forward at only 17 years old. Bjarki Hilmarsson comes as a prospect and we will see if we can loan him somewhere to give him playing time at 18 years of age.

The bulk of the deals, though, brought a bunch of South American players mostly from Chile. I guess Rudi thought replacing Miiko with players from his country was a good idea. Lisandro Martínez arrives from Argentina’s Defensa y Justicia to strength the center of the defensive line along Chilean Damián Schmidt. Christián Gutierrez will be the new WBL coming in to replace his fellow countryman Albornoz. Sebastián Díaz, a 23 year old Chilean, will rotate on the DM/CM positions and Martín Bolados comes to feature on either wing on attack as an IF.

At the tail end of the market and with the sale of Waldemar Anton we were forced to make a move for a CB. We had already brought Lisandro and Damián, but I wanted someone at least as good as Anton. What was my surprise when I found Wallace (CB) had been made available by Lazio and there was a bidding war going on for his services. We entered it and although the price was a little high for my liking I closed the deal at €10M with €7M more to be paid in a bunch of installments during the following months. Business. With him arrived Dario Del Fabro (CB) from Juventus too, another player transfer listed that came for quite a low price given his attributes in my opinion.

Future Deals

Considering Masato Kobayashi (WBL) part of the 2019 summer transfer window as he arrived on late July, three more South American prospects will arrive in July 2020. Brazilians Bobô (GK, 17yo) and Jones Leandro (WBR, 17yo), and Chilean José Ayoví (AML, 16yo) all were signed as prospects and are still years away of being an important part of Hannover’s squad.

Preseason 2019

We had a quiet month of August as we made all of our deals prior to the summer or during the month of July (barring that late Anton/Wallace swap which went smoothly to be fair), focusing solely on game preparation for the next season.

Six matches with varied results, though I don’t put much weight onto them and just tried to build a good physical condition on the guys. I can’t care less about those results, really. We were able to get out of the game against OM without anyone badly injured and pretty much everyone on match shape, so we did our job.

Up next

The month will end with a trip to Frankfurt to face Weberg-Beeck on the DFB-Pokal 1st Round, followed by the first two Bundesliga games of the season against Freiburg and Mainz. A two-week break will follow before we fight Bayern at home and start our Europa League trip, but that’s still more than a month away.





We overachieved past season in the league and are now expected to clear the UEL group. I don’t have much hope, but we’ll see. A top-half finish in the Bundesliga seems doable, but again, we’re predicted to finish 14th by the media so the board may be a little overhyping everything. The cup is a personal challenge that I want to overcome given last season atrocious failure. Consider that title won already.

You can stay updated to the minute between new episodes drops with the little pieces of content that I will be publishing on Twitter & Slack, where I live-post stuff as I play the game so you can follow Rudi’s path as closely as possible: