Football Season Guide

It was a season of two halves for Mainz last time around with the club emerging as a serious challenger for a European spot in the first half of the season but a poor run of form following the winter break saw them slip down the table to finish the season three spots above the relegation zone. Coach Thomas Tuchel will be hoping to improve on that finish this season and has been busy in the transfer market. Mainz will be without top scorer Adam Szalai who completed a move to Schalke during the summer. Jan Kirchhoff also left the club to sign on for Bayern Munchen while the club chose not to extend the contracts of Andreas Ivanschitz, Radoslav Zabavnik, Ivan Klasnic and Marco Caligiuri. Mainz relied too heavily on Szalai's goals last time around and it is not surprising that Tuchel has focused on improving his attack with Mainz bringing in Dani Schahin, Sebastian Polter and Shinji Okazaki, who is likely to replace Szalai in the starting line-up. And with Shawn Parker and Nicolai Muller already on the books, Tuchel will have pretty decent attacking options on his hands this season. Mainz also managed to snap up Christoph Moritz on a free transfer from Schalke while Johannes Geis also joined the club from Greuther Furth though the 19-year old is only expected to be a squad player. Julian Koch has been brought in to provide competition to Zdenek Pospech in the right back position while Joo-Ho Park has been signed from FC Basel and is expected to take over from Junior Diaz on the opposite flank.