Opposition Check: Eintracht Braunschweig

For Eintracht Braunschweig, the victory was also a small step forward in the relegation battle. The team is currently in 16th place in the 2nd Bundesliga with 18 points collected. Due to their recent success, the Lions were able to easily close the gap out of the relegation places and are now only two points behind in 15th place.

Daniel Scherning has been in office at Eintracht Braunschweig since November 2023. Nevertheless, he went into the 2024/25 second division season with what “felt like” a new team. Before the start of the round, the Lower Saxony team recorded 17 departures and twelve new arrivals. The epitome of upheaval. How do you form a real team from such a newly thrown together team? “We deliberately chose an early training camp to speed up this integration process so that we could spend a lot of time together early on. I think at the beginning it was 17 days in a row without a day off in between,” the coach explained to the club’s internal media department.

This meant a lot of work for the 41-year-old and his coaching team, which largely remained together apart from the departure of goalkeeping coach Manfred Petz. Before the season, the head coach paid particular attention to practicing different formations – on the one hand, a five-man chain, and on the other hand, in a four-man chain system. “It will be important over the course of a season that we are a little more variable,” said the Braunschweig head coach.

Scherning’s team showed that too. So far he has set up his team in five different systems and adapted the troops to the respective opponents. What is striking, however, is that his team has never defended in a back four.

Run. Run. Run. That shouldn’t matter that much to the Eintracht Braunschweig players. Daniel Scherning’s team is in the top half of the league when it comes to sprints completed this season – 4,643 in number. This means that the people of Lower Saxony are also in seventh place for intensive runs (14,477). Only the teams: Köln, Elversberg, Hertha BSC, Schalke 04, Magdeburg and SC Paderborn are in a better position in comparison. In addition, the Braunschweig team ran a good 5.5 kilometers more on the last matchday with almost 124 total kilometers than any other second division team last weekend.

First the substitution in the DFB Cup for VfB Stuttgart, then the European Cup debut and last but not least the Bundesliga debut against FC Bayern Munich. This is exactly how the professional career of Ermin Bičakčić began, who fled the Bosnian War at the age of two and came to Germany. Football made life in the new country easier for the Bosnians. “It wasn’t easy to build a new life under these circumstances.” I also had to integrate. And the best way I could do that was through football, especially since I was really good at a young age. “That’s how I got the attention of the other children,” he once said in a Spox interview.

His footballing talent helped him take the path that the central defender still follows today. In 2005, Bičakčić moved from a small club in the country to the youth team of VfB Stuttgart, where he eventually played his way up to the men’s team. The now 35-year-old experienced his career upswing later in the 2011/12 season at Eintracht Braunschweig. With Eintracht he made it to the 1st Bundesliga as an absolutely seeded player before he moved back to Baden-Württemberg to TSG Hoffenheim for nine years.

Last season he returned to Lower Saxony to Eintracht, where he is now the absolute leading player. “Eintracht Braunschweig is a matter close to my heart – the city, the club and the fans have always had a special meaning for me. I feel fit and feel the fire in me,” said Bičakčić after signing in 2023.

From war refugee to football to leader of a team: An impressive story that football wrote in the Bičakčić case.