Another Bundesliga loss against Mainz 05 on Sunday leaves Frank Schmidt’s in the relegation playoff place on 14 points after 22 games. The calendar year began on a slightly positive note for the Ostalbenstäbler with a 2-0 league win over Union Berlin. Since then, however, Heidenheim have gone winless in six and lost five straight league fixtures. 

The fact that the team travelled north to Copenhagen to claim a victory in the UEFA Europa Conference League playoff first leg last Thursday naturally meant little to the head coach. If anything, the tight turnarounds associated with the club’s surprise qualification for Europe in its very first Bundesliga campaign seem to have endangered Heidenheim’s prospects of remaining in the top-flight. 

With 16 defeats this season, no other Bundesliga team has incurred more league defeats than Heidenheim. Following their upset win over Dortmund on Saturday, Bochum are tied on points with Schmidt’s side for the playoff place. In Myron Boadu and Georgios Masouras, Bochum have strikers who can score goals. Heidenheim have scored just twice in their last five league matches. 

“Week after week it’s the same story,” FCH keeper Kevin Müller groused when speaking to DAZN on Sunday. “We’re not dangerous enough up front. We’re not good enough in front of goal.“

“Overall, we are just not good enough,” Schmidt added in his own DAZN interview. “We have to be honest. It’s not good enough for the Bundesliga. Everyone tried, but we hardly got any chances [at goal].

Schmidt had some rather interesting comments to add after that. 

“We benefitted from ‘kid gloves’ in our first year in the top division,” Schmidt continued. “Those gloves are off now. We have to defend our place [in the table] and that’s going to be damn hard.

“We’ll probably get five more e-mails from sports psychologists claiming to have the answers again,” Schmidt concluded. “Those have been coming in at a regular clip. I wonder why we never needed them before.“

GGFN | Peter Weis