Meet the opposition: SV Darmstadt 98
Liverpool will complete their pre-season fixture schedule by facing SV Darmstadt 98 at Deepdale on Monday night.
The Reds take a trip to the home of Preston North End for their final warm-up match before the new Premier League season begins at Chelsea next weekend.
Here, we take a closer look at opponents Darmstadt…
Darmstadt will compete in Germany’s top tier again in 2023-24 having been promoted back to the Bundesliga last season.
Under coach Torsten Lieberknecht, who was appointed in 2021, Die Lilien finished in second place in the 2. Bundesliga, which secured automatic promotion.
With 20 wins and only seven defeats across the league campaign, Darmstadt also boasted the division’s meanest defence – and that despite shipping four on the final day, after their promotion was already confirmed.
That achievement provides the club from the country’s Hesse region another tilt in the top flight having been playing in Germany’s third division as recently as 2013-14.
Back-to-back promotions in that season and the next catapulted them up to the Bundesliga for a two-year spell before relegation in 2016-17.
Phillip Tietz was the team’s top scorer en route to promotion last season with 12 goals but has since departed to join Augsburg. Braydon Manu – who chipped in with seven goals and seven assists – remains, though, and so does chief creator Tobias Kempe (nine assists).
A name that may be familiar to Reds supporters in the Darmstadt squad is Fraser Hornby, the former Everton striker who sealed a move to the club earlier this summer.
Notable ex-Darmstadt players in recent times include former Turkey international Hamit Altintop and Kevin Grosskreutz, who worked under Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp at Borussia Dortmund.
The clubs have never previously met in friendly or competitive football, and Klopp did not cross paths with Darmstadt during his spells with FSV Mainz and Dortmund either.
Like the Reds, this is Lieberknecht’s side’s fifth and final friendly before their campaign begins: away at Homburg in the DFB-Pokal on August 14.