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.”
That they did and with the afternoon’s biggest touch of class, provided – as so often this season – by the left foot of Jan-Niklas Beste, turning Eren Dinkçi’s hopeful punt forward into an equaliser of standing, deftly lifting the ball over the advancing Frederik Rønnow to send the visitors back home south with a point. The 25-year-old Beste, ditched by Borussia Dortmund (with whom he spent a decade as an academy player) and then Werder Bremen without making a Bundesliga appearance, has waited a long time to show the top flight what he can do. He is making the most of his belated chance in the elite; this was his seventh league goal of the season, to add to eight assists.
The star turn, however, remains Frank Schmidt, the coach in situ since 2007 who has presided over the whole miracle. Charismatic and – like Jürgen Klopp – known first as a personality before football success due to his role in the 2013 film Trainer!, about the life of a coach. Saturday’s game in the capital was his 611th in charge.
After four promotions and a near-miss or two, every moment is still worth savouring, even after twice taking points from Borussia Dortmund this season and going unbeaten away since December. “We are a promoted team,” Schmidt reflected, almost pinching himself post-match, “we are 2-1 behind, Union have won the last four games at home. But we didn’t give in.”
If number 611 was reasonably dramatic, it was nothing to compare with the most recent high water mark, the final day of last season at Jahn Regensburg, where stoppage time contained a penalty scored by Beste and an even later winner from their centre-forward Tim Kleindienst, turning third place not only into automatic promotion but into the 2.Bundesliga title. Their thrills can now be enjoyed in relative tranquillity. The team with the division’s smallest budget sit ninth, 14 points clear of the last automatic relegation place and 12 points better off than Köln, who currently occupy the relegation playoff spot.
Schmidt became the longest-serving coach in German football history on the day that his team registered their first top-flight win, a 4-2 victory over Werder Bremen in September, and some players have been part of that journey. Centre-back Mainka played his 200th game for the club on Saturday while midfielder Jan Schöppner, who arrived in 2020 from then-regional league Verl, reached a century of competitive games.
Heidenheim just have something money can’t buy: a heart, a team ethic & a brilliant coach plus a couple of really special players who found their way to the Brenz valley. Another important point en route to safety. Thanks for joining us if you did on the world feed.
— Derek Rae (@RaeComm) February 24, 2024
Beste and Lennard Maloney – the club’s first full international, with the USA – went off through injury, which Schmidt hopes won’t keep them out too long. Part of this miracle is that should they be absent, Heidenheim have enough in the bank to weather the storm. They deserve to play with their house money in the coming months.
Augsburg 2-1 Freiburg, Dortmund 2-3 Hoffenheim, Eintracht Frankfurt 2-2 Wolfsburg, Bayern 2-1 RB Leipzig, Mönchengladbach 5-2 VfL Bochum, Stuttgart 1-1 Cologne, Union Berlin 2-2 Heidenheim, Werder Bremen 1-1 Darmstadt, Leverkusen 2-1 Mainz.
Talking points
More records abound for the remarkable Bayer Leverkusen, 2-1 winners over Mainz on Friday night (though they needed a bad handling error from Robin Zentner for Robert Andrich’s winner) and now holders of a 33-game unbeaten run, surpassing the mark of 32 set by Hansi Flick’s Bayern Munich between 2019 and 2020. “I don’t care about records until they’re set,” said Xabi Alonso, “but now it’s happened, I’m very proud.” He was also perhaps a little relieved; not just with the surprisingly close win, but after thwacking home the opener Granit Xhaka faked a hamstring injury in his celebration, before walking it off Keyser Söze-style with a grin on his face.
Next up for the leaders are Köln in what promises to be an atmospheric derby. The struggling home side will have two strands of hope. Firstly, that their opening win of this season was in another derby, in the same venue, against Borussia Mönchengladbach in October, and secondly their spirited performance in taking a point from high-flying Stuttgart, despite having to come from behind. Timo Schultz’s side again proved the prolific Serhou Guirassy’s “Kryptonite”, as Kicker’s George Moissidis put it – the Guinea striker has never scored against Effzeh since leaving them in 2019 and missed a couple of chances – but their points total makes it already look as if the relegation playoff place they currently occupy is their best hope.
The heart rates at Bayern are in no danger of dropping just yet, despite any potential calm given the midweek announcement of Thomas Tuchel’s departure at the end of the season. The team’s first game since that was a big one and their most coherent performance in a while, despite the fact it took a stoppage-time winner by Harry Kane to clinch victory over RB Leipzig. Kane’s 27th goal of a remarkable Bundesliga debut season, a smart left-foot shot on the turn, could be one of his most important. Without it Bayern would have been 10 points adrift and, even with their and Leverkusen’s historic reputations preceding them, the title race would have been stone dead. The Bayern CEO, Jan-Christian Dreesen, who called speculation that Tuchel’s immediate departure had been discussed as “nonsense” in an interview with Bild, is treading a thin line as he tries to establish his own regime, possibly moving away from a culture of sweeping statements. “This team is not uncoachable,” the chairman, Herbert Hainer, said last week in an attempt to save the players from media broadsides, while Dressen didn’t deny an interest in Alonso as Tuchel’s successor.
Dortmund are well placed to take on the crisis baton after their eight-match undefeated run came to an abrupt end at home to Hoffenheim. Pellegrino Materazzo’s side hadn’t won in eight, incidentally. With Jadon Sancho’s fitness and rhythm still very much a work in progress, BVB recovered from conceding an early goal to Ihlas Bebou to lead at half-time, via Donyell Malen and Nico Schlotterbeck goals, only to ship two more to Maximilian Beier in three second-half minutes. Edin Terzić is under fan pressure, with booing at full time and Dortmund only still in the top four because of RB Leipzig’s loss. Anyone implying Terzić is short of ideas had plenty of ammo, with Mats Hummels (who wasn’t well enough to start) thrown on up front late on to try to salvage something. “In the end it was chaos,” Julian Brandt admitted.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayer Leverkusen | 23 | 43 | 61 |
| 2 | Bayern Munich | 23 | 37 | 53 |
| 3 | Stuttgart | 23 | 23 | 47 |
| 4 | Borussia Dortmund | 23 | 16 | 41 |
| 5 | RB Leipzig | 23 | 19 | 40 |
| 6 | Eintracht Frankfurt | 23 | 6 | 34 |
| 7 | Hoffenheim | 23 | -2 | 30 |
| 8 | Werder Bremen | 23 | -3 | 30 |
| 9 | Freiburg | 23 | -12 | 29 |
| 10 | Heidenheim | 23 | -7 | 28 |
| 11 | Augsburg | 23 | -8 | 26 |
| 12 | Borussia M'gladbach | 23 | -4 | 25 |
| 13 | Wolfsburg | 23 | -8 | 25 |
| 14 | Union Berlin | 23 | -14 | 25 |
| 15 | VfL Bochum | 23 | -18 | 25 |
| 16 | Cologne | 23 | -21 | 17 |
| 17 | Mainz | 23 | -19 | 15 |
| 18 | Darmstadt | 23 | -28 | 13 |
