Budu Zivzivadze will step onto the Voith-Arena turf on Saturday knowing exactly what is at stake: a Heidenheim defeat would confirm demotion to the second tier and end the club’s brief stay in the Bundesliga.
Heidenheim go into the match bottom of the table with four matches left and sitting 12 points adrift of automatic safety. They are seven points behind St Pauli, who occupy the relegation playoff spot, and a loss on Saturday would mathematically seal Heidenheim’s drop from the top flight.
The numbers underline the urgency. Heidenheim enjoyed a three-game unbeaten run that culminated in a 3-1 win over Union Berlin on April 11, but were knocked back by a 2-1 defeat to Freiburg last Sunday. Zivzivadze scored Heidenheim’s goal in that game, a rare bright moment in a season that has otherwise left them stranded at the foot of the table.
St Pauli arrive on Saturday having drawn 1-1 with FC Koln last Friday, a result that stretched their winless run to six games after a 5-0 loss to Bayern Munich six days prior. Their last victory remains a 1-0 trip to Hoffenheim on February 28. The club sit 16th with 26 points, five points behind Werder Bremen, Hamburger SV, Borussia Monchengladbach and Koln in the chase to climb out of the danger zone.
Context sharpens the stakes. Heidenheim returned to the Bundesliga after winning a relegation playoff in 2024-25 and have been fighting to avoid immediate demotion. St Pauli, meanwhile, are desperate to stay in the top flight and have dominated recent head-to-heads: they have won seven of their 10 meetings with Heidenheim in the 2020s, including a 2-1 victory in mid-December this season. Yet St Pauli have managed only two league away wins in 2025-26, leaving doubts about whether they can haul themselves to Voith-Arena and get the result that would send their hosts down.
The two teams arrive on contrasting runs but with the same urgent problem: momentum has been unreliable. Heidenheim’s brief uplift after the Union Berlin win evaporated with the loss to Freiburg, a match Julian Schuster described as remarkable for his team in escaping with the points against Heidenheim. St Pauli’s form suggests vulnerability too — a six-game winless streak and a heavy defeat to Bayern six days before the Koln draw — which makes the match less of a straightforward rubber stamp on Heidenheim’s fate than the standings alone might imply.
Tension centers on how each side manages that fragility. Heidenheim must convert the home advantage and the handful of encouraging signs into points; St Pauli must end a slump that has left them perilously close to the drop despite sitting above their opponents. Saturday’s fixture is as much about psychology as it is about systems: a wobbled St Pauli could hand Heidenheim life, while a stubborn St Pauli would use the match to climb further clear of the automatic-relegation places.
Put bluntly: a Heidenheim loss on Saturday equals demotion. The sharper question now is whether St Pauli can break their six-game winless run at Voith-Arena and, in doing so, consign Heidenheim to immediate relegation — or whether Heidenheim will find one more unexpected result to keep their 2025-26 survival hopes alive.
