It wasn't a last-minute commitment, nor one made possible only through the sale of an important player.
And it was one that they couldn't count on at FSV Mainz 05, "because he was seeded at his previous club," as Bo Svensson says.
The trainer is all the more looking forward to welcoming his compatriot Marcus Ingvartsen on Bruchweg next week.
He is still with the Danish national team, but after the games in the Faroe Islands and against Israel he will join the Mainz squad.
"I'm very satisfied," says Svensson, referring to the Rheinhessen transfer policy in general this summer ("I got the players and characters I thought were important") and the latest addition in particular. A few days before the end of the transition period, he had reiterated his wish for an additional striker, but with the note that such a purchase would not have an alibi function. L'art pour l'art, it was clear, would not get the team any further. Ingvartsen, on the other hand, will, Svensson is convinced in an interview with the FAZ.
In fact, there is a lot to suggest that the 25-year-old can help the Mainz team without a long start-up time.
Ingvartsen does not come from a reservist role with little match practice or a lower league, but can look back on 60 Bundesliga appearances for Union Berlin as a regular in the past two years.
In the current season he played in two Bundesliga games.
In other words: those responsible for 05 don't have to worry about their physical condition any more than they have to worry about introducing the new man to the league.
Szalai tested positive for Corona
Potential Ingvartsen experts should not be confused by his previous position. In Berlin, the Dane was planned for a more defensive position and was mainly used as an eighth. "If I saw him like that too, the move would probably not have happened," says Bo Svensson, who knows from earlier years Ingvartsen's qualities as a striker: The New Mainz player has played 30 games in 74 league games for the Danish first division club FC Nordsjælland met. The coach was the former 05 coach Kasper Hjulmand.
In this respect, the conversations between the Rheinhessen and the player turned out to be much easier than expected. Svensson wanted Ingvartsen as a striker, "and Marcus wanted to go back to the position he was trained for". The 05er initially agreed with Union Berlin on a loan deal until the end of the season, according to Kicker for an amount of 600,000 euros. Linked to this is a purchase obligation: If the Mainz team should keep the class, they have to take over Ingvartsen for a further 2.3 million - or may, depending on their perspective and balance sheet, at the end of the season.
Svensson had not hidden that it would have been risky to go through the season with only three trained attackers. In the new addition, however, he sees more than just a fourth man alongside Jonathan Burkardt, Karim Onisiwo and Ádám Szalai, who tested positive for the corona virus on the Hungarian national team. Ingvartsen brings in new elements. “First of all, he's left-footed. We haven't had him in the storm so far. ”In addition, it is an offensive all-rounder. "He can play with his back to the goal, has a great understanding of the game and knows how to move in the right spaces," says Svensson.