In our “Green Space” column, Oliver Fritsch, Christof Siemes, Stephan Reich and Christian Spiller take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of ZEIT am Wochenend, issue 02/2026.
One of the Bundesliga’s footnotes that has really amused me for a while now is the ongoing PR campaign FC Augsburg. A year and a half ago, some clever advertising guy came up with the idea of, well, overemphasizing the city’s Roman roots in the FCA’s branding. The result was initially a very beautiful “Roman jersey” on which finds from the ancient Roman period were depicted. And because it was so well received, those responsible at the FCA continued to surf the Roman wave diligently.
The FCA players’ tunnel was given a “Roman look” with an entrance reminiscent of an amphitheater, stone-look walls and mosaic motifs. In 2025, in addition to the (again very nice) Roman jersey, there was a whole Roman collection. There is now even an exhibition at the stadium, “Romans at the Penalty Point,” in which archaeological finds that were once unearthed during the construction of the arena are shown.
At some point it seemed to me as if the club was only a brainstorming session by the marketing department away from the beer stands in the stadium selling larks’ tongues, otter noses and wine from amphoras, the coach sending the team into the game against the Celts in turtle formation or the president Markus Krapf sitting in the stands in a toga and laurel wreath and giving his thumbs down after his players lost 5-0 to tigers, lions and bears. Au vincere, aut mori. Win or die in the Bundesliga.
This is funny in that FCA has been playing in the Bundesliga since 2010 and has existed since 1907 anyway, but the city’s Roman history played zero point zero role in the club’s self-image until recently. Actually is Augsburg One of the oldest cities in the country, almost 2,000 years ago Augusta Vindelicum probably became the governor’s seat of the Roman province of Raetia under Emperor Trajan. All well and good. FC Augsburg, on the other hand, is something like the grayest of all gray Bundesliga mice, a kind of perpetual 15th place in the table, which is why this whole process of becoming Roman is a pretty obvious and pretty clumsy attempt to somehow spice up the club’s image. Apparet id etiam caeco, Livy once wrote, a blind man can see that, and I would like to agree with that.
Barba non facit philosophum, Plutarch once wrote, a beard doesn’t make a philosopher, and so a PR campaign doesn’t just create a new image. Most recently, the FCA even had to allow itself to be ridiculed by 1. FSV Mainz 05, whose social media department shared an AI-generated image of the Augsburg stadium as a coliseum before the duel between the two clubs.
It’s all the better that FC Augsburg now seems to remember its actual roots, namely as an inconspicuous but unpleasant opponent in the Bundesliga, to whom the experts give their thumbs down year after year, but who then still stays in the class. A small league location, a Gallic Bundesliga village populated by indomitable football workers that never stops resisting the long-established players, they are now called Bayern Munich or Babaorum, Leipzig or Laudanum.
It wasn’t that long ago that Tobias Werner rushed into his opponents on the left like Asterix once rushed into entire groups of Roman legionnaires and in the penalty area the club’s own FCA Obelix Sascha Mölders held his head into André Hahn’s flanks. The squad that Stefan Reuter had put together with his few sesterces offered less fresh food than the display at fishmonger Verleihnix. Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, it was always unpleasant against the FCA. Labor omnia vincit, said Virgil. Hard work prevails. That was the core of the FCA.
So instead of printing “Augusta Vindelicum” on the Roman collection, perhaps “Nosce te ipsum,” know thyself, would be more appropriate. And the FCA is on the right track. Manuel Baum, who coached FCA from 2016 to 2019, recently replaced coach Sandro Wagner. Striker Michael Gregoritsch, who scored 31 goals for FCA between 2017 and 2022, is now returning. In the historiography of the FCA we are back in the year 1 BC. W. (before Wagner), in which everything in Augusta Vindelicum should go back to the way it once was. By the way, this is also what some of the fans would like to see, who had already put up banners in the first half of the season calling for a “change in image to become the laughingstock of the league”.
So FCA has been in the Bundesliga for 16 years without ever attracting much attention, but is that a bad thing? Something that needs to be changed urgently and desperately using PR machines and overconfident trainers? Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, happy lives who live in happy obscurity, and that probably applies most of all to the relegation battle in the Bundesliga. The Augsburg team will probably finish 14th or 15th again, but in the end all paths lead to staying in the league.
But if the FCA actually gets hit this year, it can at least be Latin again in the end: Ave Bundesliga, morituri te salutant!
