Top five
May 10, 2011
There's something vaguely surreal about the thought of Mainz representing the Bundesliga in European competition next year. The club has one of the smallest budgets in Germany, less than 28 million euros ($40 million) for its professional division, yet the squad, led by coach Thomas Tuchel, trumped the likes of Schalke, Bremen, Stuttgart, Hamburg and Wolfsburg to earn a deserved place in the top five.
It's hard to remember back that far, but for the first two months of this season, the headlines were all about the so-called "Carnival Club" and not eventual champions Dortmund. Mainz won their first seven matches, and even as late as the winter break, they were second in the table.
Indeed, in terms of their press-and-probe style of play, Tuchel's young charges made up the German side most similar to Jürgen Klopp's title-winning squad.
"For Mainz, this is the next best thing to landing on the moon," Sporting Director Christian Heidel told reporters after his young team secured their Europa League spot with a 3-1 away win at Schalke on Saturday.
A large amount of credit is due to Heidel himself for launching the team into lunar orbit. Largely forgoing the usual network of scouts, and despite Mainz's small size (circa 200,000 inhabitants) and relative footballing obscurity, Heidel put together a squad that showed a number of Bundesliga big-shots how it was done this season.
The only problem is: a couple of key parts are now moving on.
New kids on the block
This season Mainz were known as a "boy band," and indeed striker André Schürrle and playmaker Lewis Holtby's used to celebrate goals by playing air guitar with the flag stick. But Holtby, who was out on loan from Schalke, will be returning to the Royal Blues next season, and Schürrle is transferring to heavyweights Leverkusen.
That raises the question: Will the 2011-12 edition of Mainz end up like Take That without Robbie Williams? After all, many is the boy band that has dropped off the charts once the frontmen have gone solo.
Heidel sees the Schürrle transfer as a positive.
"This transfer is a windfall, not just financially, but also for our image," Heidel told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. "Other 15-year-olds will see what's possible here, and we can go ringing some doorbells. I'll make a prediction: Schürrle won't be the only one."
Heidel started thinking ahead early. This spring he's secured the services of two top players from the German second division, Alemannia Aachen's Zoltan Stieber (10 goals, 16 assists) and Nicolai Müller (6 goals, 7 assists) of Greuther Fürth. And you can be sure that the self-confessed DVD addict will be watching a lot of player highlight reels on the video machine in his office.
He'll also be spending a lot of time on the phone trying to arrange player loans. In addition to Holtby, Mainz have had success with borrowed goods Adam Szalai (from Real Madrid's B-side) and Malik Fathi (Spartak Moscow). So expect a couple of loans in the offing as well.
And Thomas Tuchel is just the coach to blend together then talents Heidel assembles.
Spinning wheel
Whoever ends up in Tuchel's next squad, that player can probably be certain that he'll see some action at some point.
The 37-year-old Tuchel, who was promoted from Mainz's reserve side before the start of last season, has taken the sporting adage "Never change a winning team" and thrown it out the window. Tuchel rotates his starting elevens based on his analysis of opponents' strengths and weaknesses, and has no fear of benching big names.
Schürrle and Holtby, for example, didn't spend all that much time together on the pitch this season, with Tuchel often preferring to play them in succession, rather than in tandem. Those decisions raised some eyebrows, but the table speaks for itself.
And pressing football Mainz play, under Tuchel they've been remarkably stable at the back. They were one of Germany's better defensive teams last season, and in this campaign they've been stellar. Only Dortmund had conceded fewer goals after 33 rounds. That should stand the Carnival Club in good stead as they enter the uncharted waters of the Europa League.
The phrase "Mainz in Europe" may have a faintly absurd ring to it. But even stranger-but-true: this well-run, well-coached team from a small city on the Rhine could actually prosper there.
Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Matt Hermann