St. Pauli Backs Blessin as Skid Hits 9
Nine games. It’s a number that hangs over the Millerntor-Stadion like Hamburg’s persistent grey clouds. Nine straight losses for FC St. Pauli. The freefall is breathtaking. But while the fans and pundits are grabbing for parachutes, the club’s front office is insisting they’re just hitting a bit of turbulence on their chosen flight path.
The dreaded vote of confidence has arrived. Sporting Director Andreas Bornemann faced the media this week not with a pink slip, but with a shield. He insists the club “will not deviate an inch” from its support for manager Alexander Blessin. It’s a bold, almost defiant stance in a sport where loyalty is often the first casualty of a losing streak.
“We knew Alexander’s philosophy required a complete buy-in, and we see that commitment every day in training,” Bornemann stated, according to a transcript released by the club. “Results are the issue, not the process.”
So, the party line is clear. This isn’t a crisis; it’s a calibration. A painful one. The kind of pain that has seen St. Pauli plummet from the promotion playoff places to nervously looking over their shoulder at the relegation zone. The process, however, is looking increasingly like a system failure.
Data Doesn’t Lie
Let’s talk about the system. Blessin’s high-octane, “Gegenpressing” style is built on organized chaos. It demands elite fitness, flawless coordination, and a massive compute load on the players’ decision-making. When it works, it’s a suffocating wave of pressure that generates turnovers high up the pitch. When it doesn’t? You get what we’ve seen for the past two months.
The numbers are brutal. In this nine-game skid, St. Pauli has been outscored 21-4. Four goals in 810 minutes of football. The offensive throughput has collapsed. Their expected goals (xG), a metric that measures the quality of chances created, sits at 9.7 for the period. That means they’re scoring at less than half the rate that their attacking positions would predict. That isn’t just bad luck; it’s a catastrophic lack of finishing.
And on the other side of the ball, the high-risk defensive line that Blessin deploys has been exposed time and again. The system, designed for high pressure, offers very little protection once the first line of that press is broken. Opponents are finding acres of space in behind, and St. Pauli’s goalkeepers have been left facing high-percentage shots with alarming regularity. The latency between a turnover and a defensive recovery is just too high.
The Human Cost of a Bad Run
Stats paint a picture, but the human story gives it color. You can see the confidence draining from players like striker Johannes Eggestein with every missed chance. You can feel the frustration from captain Jackson Irvine, who covers more ground than almost anyone in the league, only to see a single mistake undo 90 minutes of hard work.
The support from Bornemann is one thing, but it’s a manager’s connection to the locker room that truly determines his shelf life. For now, reports suggest the squad remains behind Blessin’s methods. They’re exhausted, frustrated, but not rebellious. But belief, like physical energy, is a finite resource. How much more can be spent before the entire ecosystem goes bankrupt?
This is St. Pauli, a club whose identity is welded to a unique fan culture and a sense of sticking together. The fans are still showing up, still singing. But you can hear the anxiety creeping into the chants. They’ve seen this movie before. They know that unwavering loyalty can sometimes look a lot like managerial malpractice from the outside.
Bornemann and the board are betting that their long-term project with Blessin can withstand a short-term collapse. They believe the system will eventually self-correct and the positive regression will come. It’s a high-stakes gamble. They’re backing their man, and in doing so, they’ve tied their own fate to his.
The team travels to face Fortuna Düsseldorf on Saturday. A tenth loss doesn’t just feel possible; it feels probable.
