Hardly any football career begins in the F youth of a professional club – most of them start with a small club in the neighborhood before moving to a youth academy. The SZ visited the home clubs of prominent footballers, coaches and managers. Part 2: VfB Einberg and Marius Wolf.
A few weeks ago, VfB Einberg celebrated its 100th anniversary, and when the club report says that all expectations of the festival weekend were “not only met, but far exceeded”, then you can imagine what that was like means. The mayor stood at the tap for an evening, there was a mall party and live rock music, a parade and a church service. Of course, they only found it a pity that the club’s best-known son was not there, but he had a good reason: Marius Wolf was on an international trip with the German national team. On that Saturday in June, when the party guests reportedly jumped into the specially built pools in the heat, Wolf played briefly against Poland (0:1). The founding fathers of the club, who turned FC Einberg and the 1860 Einberg gymnastics club into VfB in 1923 in the “August Reißenweber” pub, would probably never have dreamed of: that one day the national team jersey of a local would hang in the clubhouse.
It is very practical that Marius Wolf is now a national team player. Choosing one of his club jerseys to hang up there would be problematic: he played for TSV 1860 Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt, among others, and is now with Borussia Dortmund. On the one hand, there are a lot of Sixty fans living in the area. The groundskeeper, who lives right next to the clubhouse and who likes to play the Zillertal Wedding March on the hill with the two football fields in the afternoon, is also clearly visible. But Einberg, ten kilometers east of Coburg, is much closer to the geographic center of the republic than it is to the state capital of Munich. And so there are also Frankfurt and Dortmund fans here.
Incidentally, the kid in the 1990s who was supposed to switch to this club in 2018 was also a BVB fan. Today it prevents possible teasing that a neutral, white jersey with the number 17 and signature hangs on the wall behind glass, only garnished with autograph cards from Wolf’s stations in Munich-Giesing, Cologne, Berlin and Dortmund.
Here in Einberg, everyone learns from an early age how to immediately retrieve a ball that has been thrown into the bushes
The spacious terrace in front of the clubhouse hasn’t been around that long, but from here you have a great view of the playing fields, a grass pitch and a sand pitch. No, not even red soil, it actually looks like a rectangular beach behind chain link fence. Behind it lies an idyllic piece of forest. Marius’ father Martin has come, as has his former youth coach Matthias Christl and the man for public relations, Fabian Friedrich. Christl says everyone here learns from an early age how to immediately retrieve balls that have been thrown into the woods. “I was a coach in a few clubs, here it works very well with the discipline,” says the 47-year-old.
The guest from Upper Bavaria is served a tasty, well-chilled non-alcoholic beer. In the area, every village has two breweries. “There’s a lot to choose from here. And the beer never tastes the same,” says Martin Wolf, “because it’s still handmade. Then the same beer tastes different every time it’s brewed.” Coach Christl adds: “Depending on the day.”
Open detailed view
As a boy, Marius (third from right) was shorter than most – which helped him assert himself.
(Photo: Martin Wolf/oh)
It’s similar with Marius Wolf. An original that could only mature here in this form, they are convinced of that in Einberg. At the beginning there are the stories that are congruent with many later professionals: started playing very early. intrinsic ambition. training discipline. Marius was quite small for a long time. This helped him learn assertiveness. “There weren’t any smaller trousers,” says Father Wolf, laughing. He brought an old photo album with him and shows pictures of Marius’ first days in the team, at the age of four and a half, at the end of 1998. Martin Wolf was also a player here, in 1983 he co-founded a regulars’ table for long-time residents. Every year, the regulars’ table organizes a trip to Marius’ last game of the season.
His slenderness made it difficult for the father and the respective trainers to promote the talent, i.e. to establish it in the older age groups. All parents want their child to play. But Marius was also very good very early on. “We certainly didn’t do everything right,” admits coach Christl. Today, young people would probably be used much less result-oriented. But not in the early noughties. “We also wanted to win,” he says. Sometimes it was necessary to negotiate with other parents because little Marius took the place of an older parent. But he was always the best, no matter where. “And when we saw that the opposition only had big players, we put Marius aside so that he could play to his strengths,” says Christl.
It is well known that Wolf was retrained as a professional from right winger to right full-back. But in Einberg he was at home anywhere on the field. The dad no longer knows exactly when the following anecdote happened, Marius Wolf was still very young: “Once a week he asked his mom in the hairdressing salon: In the game on Friday – are we going to play there without offside? “Yes , in the cross field,” replied the coach, who was just getting his hair cut. Then on Friday, Marius ran forward from a free-kick and stood in front of the goalkeeper. He had been thinking all week about how he would approach the game .
Marius Wolf grew up 500 meters from the clubhouse as the crow flies, in a time of transition. On the one hand, there was still a meeting at 3 p.m. for the bolt, and those who came too late simply couldn’t play. On the other hand, he was already training under C youth coach Christl in a syndicate because the number of members had already begun, which can be observed primarily in rural areas today. The nearest large youth academy is quite far away from Einberg. To stay with the Franconian image: It is no longer the homely brewery, but mass production. Even if it’s not bottles that come out here, but young professionals, they lose some of their differences here.
“Where is the dad who works in the office at Brose, can stop at 3 p.m. and also has the quality to lead youth training?”
But it has to be. The Wolfs drove their son to 1. FC Nürnberg four times a week, from the age of 13. That is also: 4000 kilometers – per month. Mom hired an employee in the hairdressing salon so she had time, Dad went to assembly work to earn more money. Today he wonders whether parents in an area like Einberg can still cope with it in terms of time and money. “Where is the dad who works in the office at Brose, can stop at 3 p.m. and also has the quality to lead youth training?” says Christl. In Einberg you think a lot about the future of German football. Probably also because one of them made it to the top.
But if the son then moves to boarding school earlier, another footballer would come out. “Marius is a street footballer,” says his father, someone who constantly had to assert himself against bigger players and was learning. Both his father and the former coach Christl think: Marius is not the best in the country in any position, but very good in several positions. And above all someone who always “wanted everyone to stick together,” as Christl puts it, who invokes team spirit. Maybe because they always emphasize team spirit in Einberg. At the 100-year celebration, VfB President Ralf Jakob started the festivities with the following sentence: “Sport strengthens arms, torso and legs, shortens the dull time, and through clubs it protects us from loneliness.”
And should they miss their famous son in the clubhouse, they can at least look over the shoulder of their cousin, who is one year younger. Felix Wolf founded an e-sports department during Corona, and the team was recently promoted to the Bayernliga Nord. Felix Wolf can theoretically use his cousin as an avatar.
Previously published: Bastian Schweinsteiger/FVOberaudorf (26.8.)
