Despite personal success for star player Kevin Keegan, who won the Ballon d'Or in 1978, the previous season saw mixed results as Hamburg finished ninth in the Bundesliga.
[2][5] The team was led by Kevin Keegan along with young, rising German talent including Felix Magath, Horst Hrubesch, and Manfred Kaltz.
[4] Hrubesch also needed a bedding-in period and didn’t find the back of the net for his new club until his sixth game but would eventually add 13 goals, benefiting from cross delivered by right-back Manfred Kaltz.
FC Kaiserslautern made the early running in the Bundesliga, but HSV closed the gap to one point just before Christmas with a 1–0 victory at Bayern Munich and a 3–1 success against Arminia Bielefeld, a match that saw Keegan score a hat-trick.
On the roster but did not play in a Bundesliga match: Jürgen Stars; Bernd Gorski; Andreas Karow; Thomas Bliemeister.