Friendly against second-tier newcomers
Hardly anyone counted EV Elversberg among the favourites for promotion last season. The club from the Saarland had returned to the 3. Liga following an eight-year absence thanks to an outstanding run of 17 games without defeat, but Horst Steffen's team were regarded more as a candidate for relegation than they were for promotion. But even in a new division, SVE proved to be unstoppable; the club occupied a promotion berth without interruption from Matchday 5 onwards and sat atop the division from mid-September until the end of the season.
Pre-season preparations for the second-tier newcomer have gone according to plan so far: they beat the Borussia Mönchengladbach U23s by a 3-1 scoreline in their first friendly, before defeating third-tier FC Ingolstadt 6-2 last Friday.
The game against SV Elversberg will be a special one for Marco John: the game will take place at the ERBE-Arena in Heilbronn, where the wide man played for local club FC Union until the age of 11 before joining TSG Hoffenheim. "''Of course it's nice to return home. I only ever represented Heilbronn at youth level and so never got to play in the big stadium, but it's still not like any other friendly match. My family and a few friends will be there," said the TSG player in an interview with tsg-hoffenheim.de.
Conversely, the Elversberg squad contains three players who can look back on a TSG past: goalkeeper Nicolas Kristof was a TSG Academy player from 2011 to 2015 before joining SV Sandhausen in 2015. Club captain Kevin Conrad, who is currently injured, played for Hoffenheim from 2006 to 2013 and even made the TSG squad for 15 Bundesliga matches, though he never made it onto the pitch. He made 63 appearances for the U23s. Semih Sahin was part of the second-team squad from January 2020 to August 2021 and made 32 appearances.
Kick-off in Heilbronn on Wednesday (12 July) is at 18:00 CET. Tickets are available online and from the ticket office on the evening.