Bundesliga season check
Despite high transfer fees: coaches remain the poorest swine in the league
Had to go to Dortmund early: coach Lucien Favre
© Lars Baron / Getty Images
The winner of the season? Sure, that’s Union Berlin. The best goals were of course scored by Robert Lewandowski and the coaches remained the losers despite the transfer fees.
Excitement of the season
The life of a football coach is arduous, often frustrating and unfair. It is not uncommon for it to end in a more or less long phase of unemployment. Trainers often change their place of residence and are under constant performance monitoring by fans and the media. Sometimes they are the last to find out about their release, while half the league is raging over them. As an outsider, you sometimes wonder how these people actually cope with the constant stress? The list of ailments, i.e. the dismissed coaches, is particularly long in the past season because two clubs alone shot a total of five coaches. Schalke fired David Wagner, Manuel Baum and Christian Gross. As is well known, none of this has brought anything. Mainz 05 was rude and fired first Achim Beierlorzer and then Jan-Moritz Lichte. In this case it brought back the success and Mainz kept the class impressively under the current coach Bo Svensson.
We mustn’t forget Bruno Labbadia (Hertha BSC Berlin), Florian Kohfeldt (Werder Bremen), Markus Gisdol (1. FC Cologne), Heiko Herrlich (FC Augsburg), Peter Bosz (Bayer Leverkusen), Uwe Neuhaus (Arminia Bielefeld) and Lucien Favre (Borussia Dortmund). They are all looking for a new job. But the coach dismissals weren’t the ups and downs of the season. The new and exciting thing was the coach transfers that were emerging on a large scale in the Bundesliga. Marco Rose moves from Gladbach to BVB for five million euros, Adi Hütter goes from Eintracht Frankfurt to Gladbach for seven and a half million euros and Julian Nagelsmann moves from RB Leipzig to FC Bayern Munich for a rumored 25 million euros – a world record.
So there was a lot of talk about the new power of coaches, they are no longer the weakest link, etc. But that is not true. The long list of laid-offs speaks against it, as does another factor: after the coaches mentioned had announced their changes, the performance curve of their teams went steeply downwards. Borussia Mönchengladbach and Eintracht Frankfurt gambled away the Champions League qualification, Leipzig won none of the last four games of the season, the cup final against Dortmund was even lost. If this is what the new power of coaches looks like, nobody benefits from it.
Season winner
“We from the East always go forward, shoulder to shoulder for Eisern Union, times are tough and the team is tough, that’s why we go with Eisern Union,” says the first verse of the club’s anthem, sung by Nina Hagen.
“Shoulder to shoulder”, the Iron have now pulled quite a long way forward, and they will even continue on their way across Europe. With a win against RB Leipzig, the team of Swiss coach Urs Fischer secured participation in the Conference League on the last day of the match. That means seventh place, and that is the next huge success for the Berlin club after the rise two years ago. With Max Kruse they got the decisive reinforcement. But of course it was not only Kruse who brought Union forward. That the team wins even without their playmaker, she proved, when Kruse was absent for a longer period of time due to injury. The success of Union shows that an excellent coach and a good transfer policy can compensate for a lack of financial power.
The most beautiful goals of the season
41 goals. No Bundesliga attacker has ever scored more goals in a season than Robert Lewandowski, who broke Gerd Müller’s all-time record (from the 1971/72 season). And only in the 90th minute of the last game. The man has nerves. Then he let himself be celebrated vigorously by the teammates. In his home country of Poland, Lewandowski has finally risen to become a national hero: a “Machine Robert, Made in Poland”, cheered a Polish reporter, and proudly added: “A boy from Warsaw whose star will now shine in the football firmament.” He is right.
Loser of the season
FC Schalke 04. Werder Bremen. Let’s sum it up like this: The so-called traditional clubs don’t have it easy at the moment. While investor and works clubs such as RB Leipzig or VfL Wolfsburg are raking in even more money in the Champions League, the long-time residents are increasingly saying goodbye to the 2nd division. Werder and Schalke meet HSV, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Hannover 96, Karlsruher SC or 1. FC Nürnberg in the lower house. Because the word tradition doesn’t just have a positive sound. Tradition can also mean that clubs are badly run and make mistakes that then lead to decline. Nevertheless, it remains annoying that two big names are once again disappearing into the endless expanse of the 2nd division. Schalke and especially Werder should be prepared for the fact that the stay in the 2nd division will last longer than a year. See HSV.
