HEIDENHEIM: Bundesliga club Heidenheim scored twice in three minutes in the second half to come from two goals down and snatch a 2-2 draw against visitors Elversberg in the relegation playoff first leg on Thursday.

Elversberg, third in the second division, stunned Heidenheim to go 2-0 up by halftime thanks to goals from Lukas Petkov in the 18th minute and Fisnik Asllani, the team’s top scorer this season.

Heidenheim, who finished in 16th place in the Bundesliga, had a goal disallowed on the stroke of halftime and hit the woodwork early in the second half before Tim Siersleben pulled one back in the 62nd.

Just two minutes later Mathias Honsak drew Heidenheim level, scoring on the rebound as the hosts got 14 efforts towards goal in a strong second half.

“A brutal game,” Heidenheim coach Frank Schmidt told Sky Germany. We’re in a good situation to go to Elversberg next week. Everything is open for the return leg.”

The return leg in Elversberg is on Monday.

Elversberg, from a town of just 13,000 people, are bidding to become the smallest club to play in the top flight and coach Horst Steffen was not too discouraged despite watching his team surrender a two-goal lead.

“At the end it’s alright, we wanted to avoid defeat. We’ll have to get it done at home,” said Steffen.

VfL Bochum and Holstein Kiel were relegated from the Bundesliga while Cologne and Hamburg SV won automatic promotion to the top division.

Since the Bundesliga playoff was reintroduced at the end of the 2008-09 campaign, the top-flight team has won over two legs in 13 of 16 seasons.

The most recent second-division side to win promotion via the playoff was Union Berlin, who came through on away goals against VfB Stuttgart in 2019.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2025