With 615 HBL appearances, the long-time national goalkeeper is now sole third in the all-time HBL rankings and overtook Jan Holpert in TVB's 33:31 win over MT Melsungen last week. There are now only two goalkeepers ahead of him in the ranking, but they are also still active: Johannes Bitter, his predecessor in Stuttgart, with 640 appearances, and Carsten Lichtlein, goalkeeping coach and stand-by goalkeeper at MT Melsungen, with 712 HBL games. Behind them are two more goalkeepers:  Holpert (614) and Henning Fritz (594), before the first field player follows in today's Füchse Berlin branch manager Volker Zerbe (593 appearances).

After playing the youth team of Bad Langensalza, Heinevetter moved to second division club Concordia Delitzsch, where he became a youth and junior national player. In 2004, he celebrated his first title, as the best tournament goalkeeper, Heinevetter steered the German juniors to U20 European Championship gold. A year later he promoted to the Bundesliga with Delitzsch, then moved to Magdeburg, where he later replaced Johannes Bitter. In 2007 he won the EHF Cup with SCM. In total, Heinevetter played 135 Bundesliga games for Magdeburg until 2009, where he also became the national team player.

In 2006, he played the first of 206 international matches for Germany. His greatest success was winning the Olympic bronze medal in Rio in 2016; he played his 200th international match against Slovenia as part of the Olympic qualification in Berlin in 2021. In November 2023, he returned between the goal posts for Germany for two games when Andreas Wolff was not yet fit after a back injury. This is also why Heinevetter was in the provisional squad list for the EHF EURO 2024 on home ground.

At club level, he moved from Magdeburg to the then still up-and-coming Füchse Berlin in 2009. He played for eleven years for the club from the capital, with whom he became German Cup winner in 2014, EHF Cup winner in 2015 and 2018 and IHF Super Globe winner in 2015 and 2016. After 353 HBL games for the Füchse, Heinevetter moved on to MT Melsungen in 2020, where he played 75 more Bundesliga games and five games in the DHB Cup (including the 2021 final against Lemgo).

After two more years he transferred again, and TVB Stuttgart celebrated the arrival of the goalkeeper as a “transfer coup at all”. At TVB, Heinevetter had his 600th Bundesliga game in his 40th HBL appearance in October 2023 against Flensburg, but lost it.

Heinevetter currently has 55 appearances for the TVB on his tally. If he stays healthy, he will leave the “Wild Boys” at the end of the season with 66 games – and a total of 626 HBL appearances. Then his career continues in Eisenach – whether in league one or two will be decided by beginning of June.

The top 10 all-time appearances in the Handball Bundesliga:
1 Carsten Lichtlein – 712 games
2 Johannes Bitter – 640
3 Silvio Heinevetter – 615
4 Jan Holpert – 614
5 Henning Fritz – 594
6 Volker Zerbe – 593
7 Christian Schwarzer – 588
8 Stefan Hecker – 571
9 Mathias Andersson – 569
10 Michael Haaß – 552

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Ein Beitrag geteilt von LIQUI MOLY HBL (@liquimoly_hbl)

Photo: Weller