Marcus Berg: Now the Most Important Player in the Bundesliga

With Paulo Guer­rero and Mladen Pet­ric sus­tain­ing long term injuries, Ham­burg are fac­ing a for­ward cri­sis of epic pro­por­tion. The weight of a team that is tied on points for the league falls on the shoul­ders on young Swede Mar­cus Berg. No mat­ter who Lab­ba­dia might sign, bring up from the reserves or shift, Berg is still the only proven striker the Dinosaurs have. He no longer gets to be vet­ted slowly through the Europa League. He’s now the first guy on the lineup card. He beats any player for any team to that lineup card. Bay­ern would rather not be with­out Ribery, but they can sur­vive. Ham­burg can’t do this with­out the Euro U21 golden boot win­ner. By virtue of these injuries, he’s the best sign­ing by any club this year. How he adapts to being the main striker is going to make or break the Dinosaurs this cam­paign as they com­pete on two fronts.

Is he up to the task? I think he is. He’s already scored five goals between the Bun­desliga and Europa League dur­ing lim­ited time. He has a good nose for goal and knows how to move. What he lacks is a foil, so he may have to take a mas­sive detour in career devel­op­ment to learn the art of hold­ing the ball. In all fair­ness, if he embraces the chal­lenge, this could be the best thing to ever hap­pen for the kid.

So what can Lab­ba­dia do to off­set the loss of his two main strik­ers? There are a few pos­si­bil­i­ties. Let’s look at them.

1. 4–5-1

   He can change tac­tics and play a five man mid­field. This would be the best option if Berg was a back-to-goal for­ward. But he isn’t. It’s not that he hasn’t show an abil­ity to inter­change with other play­ers, but so far he has done so within the box. A lone tar­get man, need to be able to hold the ball out­side the area and wait for the mid­field to catch up with him. I don’t see this at Berg’s nat­ural role. It’s not say­ing that he can’t do it, but even at the U21’s this past sum­mer, it was Ola Toivo­nen or PSV who was the link man in their setup with Berg play­ing front-to-goal. It may be too much to ask for both a quick adap­tion along with the tran­si­tion to a new league. The best hope here is that Lab­ba­dia can start to teach the young Swede how to hold up the ball.

2. 4–3-3

   How is this dif­fer­ent than a 4–5-1, you ask? Well it’s obvi­ous. You uti­lize two wide men like Elia and Torun to play as a for­ward line rather than hold­ing them back to pack the mid­field. If they pro­vide good ser­vice, Berg is well suited to fin­ish­ing and can play in the air. This would seem to be Labbadia’s best choice as he has the likes of Ze Roberto, Jarolim, Ben­jamin, Pitroipa, Tro­chowski and Caste­lan to form a solid unit behind the front line to pro­tect the back four and also link play to the three man front line. A few of these guys can even play in this new 3 man for­ward corps.

3. Elia — Berg

   He can move Eljero Elia into a for­ward role, as has been sug­gested. It has been claimed that the young Dutch­man play as an out-and-out for­ward. I don’t have access to the Dutch Ere­di­visie, so I’ve never seen Elia play the role. What I do know from watch­ing him is that he is the last per­son a defense wants run­ning at them with the ball. Mov­ing him into the for­ward posi­tion would neu­tral­ize one of Hamburg’s oppo­nents’ biggest fears.

4. Pitroipa — Berg

   He can play Jonothan Pitroipa as a link man. He’s more of an attack­ing mid­fielder, but unlike Elia, whose pace is too impor­tant to neu­tral­ize by push­ing him off the wing, Pitroipa could slot in as a deep for­ward to link the mid­field to Berg. This could be, if not the main answer, a solid option to keep oppos­ing teams hon­est in their approach to any upcom­ing matches with HSV.

5. Raid HSV II

   There are four other kids that could join Berg in the for­ward line: Tunay Torun, Max­i­m­il­ian Beis­ter, Tol­gay Arslan and Andre Hahn. Torun we saw this past week­end, although he was a RW in the game. Arslan is another M/F. Hahn and Beis­ter are both for­wards, but are very young. Regard­less of age, one or more of them are going to be needed as Berg can’t play every minute of every game henceforth.

6. Free­bies
   Finally, there are talks of pick­ing up Pol­ish inter­na­tional Ebi Smo­larek, whose con­tract wasn’t renewed by Rac­ing San­dan­ter in the sum­mer. Regard­less of how much he can fit into the sys­tem, it seems absolutely nec­es­sary that they do this for depth and expe­ri­ence. Plus Ebi has played in the Bun­desliga before at Dort­mund and could also play as part of a 4–3-3 as he can play wide.