More than 8,000 supporters are travelling with SV Elversberg to face Borussia Dortmund, from a municipality of just 13,000 people. Vincent Wagner described the trip as a community effort, and Cole Campbell says the squad's pressing and hunger are part of why the club have grown into this kind of occasion. The match, Borussia Dortmund vs SV Elversberg, is on Saturday at 15.30 and will be shown on Sky.
Elversberg's pressing game
Campbell's case is built around what Elversberg do without the ball. Speaking to bundesliga.com, he said: "I think it’s about the football that we play and the high pressing that we have that puts a lot of teams under pressure. We try to give 100 percent into the pressing and into attack and I think we have been successful in doing that so far." That lines up with Wagner's own description of the team as "brave, attractive, attacking and at the same time defensively stable."
The numbers fit the idea. Elversberg have scored 16 league goals this season, and 9 of them have come in the first half. They hit three first-half goals in the 4-1 win over Mainz, and they did the same against Augsburg, which is a decent sign that their fast starts are not a one-off. Campbell has also been involved enough to speak with real authority, with 7 Bundesliga appearances and 302 minutes so far.
The away support is the other part of the story. Wagner said, in comments translated from German by SPORT1, "Hooray, the whole community is there. That is the new slogan that is being sung." Elversberg are also pulverising their own club record for away matches, which tells you how quickly their support has travelled with them. On Saturday, the stage will be Dortmund's. Elversberg will still try to make it their own by pressing high from the first whistle.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →
