FC St. Pauli

Eggestein joined the Boys in Brown from Royal Antwerp in the summer of 2022. Under coach Timo Schultz he was a regular starter and topped the internal scoring chart with five goals in the first part of the season, but featured less often in the record-breaking second half of the campaign under Fabian Hürzeler, who operated with one central striker instead of two. In the promotion season, Eggestein made his first start in almost ten months in the 5-1 drubbing of Holstein Kiel. He didn’t score on that day but then hit a rich vein of form in the following five games, finding the net six times, including a brace against Nürnberg, and thus having a major hand in the team consolidating their position at the top of the table. The striker had cemented his position at the heart of the attack, despite not scoring for another four months. 

Ever reliable, Eggestein was also one of the first names on the team sheet under Alexander Blessin last term, starting every game until the visit of Borussia Dortmund in March 2024 and missing only two matches due to illness until the restart in 2025. With the competition for places growing in attack as the season wore on, however, the 27-year-old made just five cameo appearances in the final third of the campaign. His last goal in a St. Pauli shirt came in the 2-0 win at Heidenheim in mid-January.

Boukhalfa also arrived at the Millerntor in the summer of 2022. In his first six months under Schultz he remained a fringe player and did not feature in the record-breaking second half of the campaign after Hürzeler took over from Schultz. The midfielder didn’t get the playing time he wanted in his second season either, though he did score in the 3-1 home defeat of Schalke in the Bundesliga and against Düsseldorf in the DFB Cup, when the Boys in Brown went out in a penalty shootout.

After an unsatisfactory first couple of years, the Freiburg native played more often in the Bundesliga under new coach Alexander Blessin. Two brief outings against Heidenheim and Union Berlin were followed by a first start in the 3-1 defeat at Augsburg when he not only registered his first goal in the top flight but also the first by the club in more than 14 years. The hard-working midfielder was then ruled out by a thigh injury but returned to start in all of the remaining games in the first half of the season, performing impressively alongside captain Jackson Irvine in holding midfield. Like Eggestein, he featured less often in the second half of the campaign as the battle for places intensified, but he returned to the starting lineup in the run-in and notched his fourth and final goal for the club at home against Bayer Leverkusen.

We would like to thank Jojo and Carlo for their service over the last three years and wish them all the very best for the future!

Photos: FC St. Pauli/Witters