Opposition Check: Hannover 96

At least it looks really good. Hannover 96 is leader of the 2nd Bundesliga in the 2024/25 season. Above all, an impeccable home record with six wins from six games in front of the home crowd ensures a thick cushion of points. The team from Lower Saxony has 22 points on its side – and is therefore one point ahead of its direct competition from Paderborn and Düsseldorf. But now SV Darmstadt 98 is coming to the Heinz von Heiden Arena and is ready to stop the 96ers‘ home run. But before the ball rolls on Saturday (November 23rd/1pm), let’s take a closer look at the Lilies‘ opponents.

“It was work, football, games and very little free time,” is how Stefan Leitl, head coach of Hannover 96, once described his early days as a professional footballer. The former midfielder started vocational training when he was still just 16 years old. In addition, he was already involved in competitive youth sports. While he later completed his final professional examination, he managed to make the step from youth to the professionals at FC Bayern Munich. However, it was far too big a step, as the now 47-year-old himself admitted in an interview with his current employer. No chance of keeping up. Also injured too often. The dream of a big football business? At first it seemed to have burst. From the German record champions, Leitl went to SV Lohhof – from the Bundesliga to the Oberliga.

But Leitl got up and worked on himself. He got better, gradually rose. He ended up at SV Darmstadt 98 in the summer of 2004 via 1. FC Nürnberg and Unterhaching. The former midfielder with an offensive instinct played a total of 93 competitive games for the Lilies until 2007. He later found his footballing home in Ingolstadt, where a further 190 appearances were collected.

During his time as a player, the Munich native gradually completed some coaching training. “I have my former coach at FC Ingolstadt, Benno Möhlmann, to thank for the step after my active career to become a coach,” he explained in an interview with Hannover 96. Starting with the Ingolstadt U17 team, Leitl also worked his way up in the coaching profession . He trained the FCI professionals, then joined SpVgg Greuther Fürth and achieved promotion to the Bundesliga with the Kleeblatt in 2021. But after 30 match days in the German top flight, he left the club to start anew a league lower at Hannover 96. Leitl has been in the saddle there since 2022 and is in his third season in Lower Saxony – the season in which promotion to league one should succeed?

With 16 goals this season, Hannover 96 is just 14th in the statistics. Although Leitl’s team didn’t score many goals, the Lower Saxony team can rely on an extremely strong defence. Only ten goals conceded is a league record – remarkable because they conceded three against Elversberg on the last matchday alone. However, Hannover managed to keep a clean sheet in six of the twelve second division games – also a league record.

Cagliari, Italy. The son of an Argentine mother and an Italian professional footballer was born there in Sardinia in 2004. Nicolò Tresoldi. Even as a small boy, the German-Italian loved football – but also tennis. To this day he has never lost his love for the racket and still loves being on the court. But his main focus is on football – even if a tennis icon helps him. Before every game, he watches a ten-minute motivational video by Rafael Nadal. The Spanish tennis ace is his absolute role model. A motivational ritual that seems to be paying off.

At the age of 17, the German-Italian made his professional debut for Hannover 96 in Kaiserslautern on the first matchday of the 2022/23 season. At the end of that season, the youngster had made a total of 13 competitive appearances in the 96 shirt. It’s now hard to imagine the Lower Saxony team without him. Last season he scored seven goals in 30 games, this season Tresoldi has been used in all games and has already scored twice in the opponent’s box. The 20-year-old attacker’s performances have already attracted the attention of the DFB juniors. And so he was initially nominated for the U19 national team. Since September 2023, he has also been an integral part of U21 national coach Antonio Di Salvo’s team. The 20-year-old scored five goals in eight U21 games. Tresoldi doesn’t put any pressure on himself. Maybe that is exactly the secret of his success? „I just want to go out and have fun. That’s all I want,“ he told kicker.