At the place where most of German football’s recent fairytales have been made, another one continued. Union Berlin’s role in the newest edition of the Bundesliga storybook has changed, however. The upstarts who do things their own way have not only had to get used to Champions League nights and signing international players but, far too often, to receiving the sort of bloodied noses that they used to give out in the not-too-distant past.
This season’s rub-your-eyes-and-you-still-won’t-believe-it team of German football are Heidenheim, though even they had to bow to the enduring power of Köpenick after what was a “very, very intense” Saturday afternoon as described by their captain, Patrick Mainka. “This stadium is crazy,” he said of the Alten Försterei. “Everything is against you.” On top of that, his team conceded two goals in double quick time at the end of the first half to turn the early lead given to them by Nikola Dovedan into a half-time deficit. “We just shook ourselves down,” Mainka continued, “and said to ourselves, let’s turn this around.”
