There were few tears at the end, just as there were few gazes directed to phone screens during the game to check scores elsewhere. St Pauli scarves were raised to the sky in the stands of Millentor as You’ll Never Walk Alone rolled out of the stadium’s speakers, with the players and staff forming a huddle in the middle of the field to share words of commiseration.
This club apart will live to fight another day, after a day on which they had given everything and on which it just was not enough. It would be simplistic, on a day when Europe’s premier counter-cultural club played a club that have traditionally been seen by Bundesliga fans as the embodiment of corporate football with salvation the prize, to say that Wolfsburg needed this more than St Pauli. This meant plenty to this left-leaning neighbourhood of Hamburg too, where innovative measures like selling supporters shares in the stadium to raise funds have shown how determined they are to prove that there are ways to thrive and survive in the top leagues of the modern game without shedding their traditional values.
