Extinction over: The Bundesliga-Dino returns
At the seventh attempt, three-time Bundesliga winners Hamburger SV are back in the top flight
If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around! It’s been a hectic couple of years personally. I’ve still been watching, but I’ve not had the time for much writing. Still, I have been keen to change that and Hamburg’s promotion had my creative juices flowing again…
The human race never shared the planet with the dinosaurs. Nobody ever actually saw one. Yet millions of years since their extinction, they still fascinate people with their mythical might, their extraordinary size, the fact they roamed the planet an insane 550 times longer than humans have been around, and, of course, their tragic end. How could these creatures — more powerful, more durable than anything else the planet has seen — have been so simply wiped out by a single catastrophic moment?
So the nickname “Bundesliga-Dino” wasn’t entirely fitting for Hamburger SV, then. No mythical power, might, history. A big club with a grand history, for sure. And some impressive staying power — until 2018, they were the only team to feature in every season of top flight football in Germany since the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963 — though their historically long reign was not wiped out by one single catastrophic moment, but by years of slapstick incompetence.
The modern use of “dinosaur” as a derogatory term for something or someone being reluctant to move with the times and unwilling to change is actually really unfair on the dinosaurs — their own extinction had very little to do with them doing anything wrong — but it hits the HSV of the 2010s perfectly.
Around the turn of the century, the nickname took root because Hamburg were the elder statesmen of Bundesliga football. The league’s very own dinosaur. So of course they were wiped out eventually.
Today, as I’m writing this, is seven years since 12th May 2018. The day the clock stopped. The day the Bundesliga-Dino went extinct.
A small minority of fans managed to delay the inevitable a little while longer when, in stoppage time, flares were thrown onto the playing field and play was stopped as police took to the pitch to stop a riot breaking out. But you can’t put off the inevitable forever.
Hamburg’s relegation that year had been a long time coming for a club that had become known for consistently humiliating itself. They flirted with relegation in 2012, finishing 15th, surviving thanks to Köln picking up just two points from their final nine matches. The next season showed some renaissance but it was short-lived and the warning had not, it turned out, been heeded.
What followed was telenovela-esque. They finished 16th in 2014, putting them into the relegation play-off with the third-placed team from that season’s 2. Bundesliga. They survived on away goals after a pair of draws in the two-legged play-off.
Fast-forward 12 months and they were in the play-off again. With 179 minutes played, Hamburg were trailing. They scored an equaliser to force extra-time, scored with five minutes of that to go, then, in the final minute of extra-time, survived a missed penalty that would have forced a shootout.
The next two seasons saw HSV battle relegation again, clambering to 10th with a final day win in 2016 and escaping the play-off by a single point with a final day win in 2017. By now, that clock at the Volksparkstadion had become some sort of hubristic symbol for Bundesliga watchers everywhere. Hamburg were playing with fire and that clock looked like they were poking their tongue out as they danced with death.
In May 2018, it stopped ticking. The dinosaurs died quickly. Hamburg did not.
As if that wasn’t enough, relegation was followed by a tragicomedy of near misses in their attempts to return to the top flight.
In their first three seasons in the 2. Bundesliga, Hamburg finished fourth, one place from the relegation play-off. Across those seasons they kept collapsing during the run-in: from 2018/19 to 2020/21, HSV averaged 1.46 points per game up until the end of March, then 1 point per game from 1 April onwards. They were a point from automatic promotion in 2019, a point from the play-off in 2020, and won just two of their last eight games to all but throw away promotion in 2021.
Even as Hamburg stopped shooting themselves in the foot quite so often, the tragedy continued.
In 2022, they did reach the play-off and won the first leg in Berlin before suffering a 2-0 defeat to Hertha BSC at home.
Then came 2022/23, when Hamburg fans celebrated a final day win at Sandhausen and, with it, mistakenly celebrated promotion.
With lowly 1. FC Heidenheim — a club that had never competed in Germany’s top flight — losing at Jahn Regensburg and Hamburg winning in Sandhausen, promotion was set to be secured. At full-time, the man on the Sandhausen PA system congratulated the visiting Hamburg fans on their promotion to the 1. Bundesliga, the party began.
But the gun had been jumped. Heidenheim scored an equaliser in the 92nd minute in Regensburg and, with the HSV fans in Sandhausen still blissfully unaware, added a 98th minute winner to deny Hamburg their return to the promised land.
Hamburg headed to the play-off for a second year running, this time against VfB Stuttgart, and were behind within a minute of the first leg. Homegrown Hamburg boy Josha Vagnoman — talk about salt in the wounds — added a second for Stuttgart, who ultimately went on to win 6-1 across the two games.
Two years on, they finally have their moment. And it’s not just a moment for HSV, but a great moment for German football.
Even if they did it in the most Hamburg way.
Kicking off on Saturday evening, HSV knew a home win against 17th-placed SSV Ulm would seal promotion. Within seven minutes, Ulm were deservedly ahead. HSV quickly equalised but then, at 1-1, conceded a penalty. Daniel Heuer Fernandes saved and the Rothosen didn’t look back, taking the lead minutes later and making it 3-1 by half-time.
That goal came from Davie Selke, his 22nd of the season. This campaign has seen Robert Glatzel (72 goals in 114 league games for the club) struggle for fitness but Selke, a Bundesliga veteran by now, has stepped up. With the pair of them, HSV already have two troublesome centre-forwards for their return.
Ask fans of German football for the 18 clubs they’d pick to make up their ultimate Bundesliga and HSV would almost unanimously be there. Yes, they deserved to go down, and yes, most were gleeful that they finally got what they deserved. But they have been gone for so long that the Schadenfreude has largely dissipated.
People love to see a giant club collapse under the weight of, well, whatever it is that’s crushing them. Pressure, history, incompetence. A combination of all those and a dash of anything else you want to throw into the mix.
For those looking in from the outside, the Schadenfreude is truly irresistible. Nobody is entitled to be at the top forever and it’s great to see that play out in reality. Nothing is permanent, everything must be earned, and screw anyone who tries to defy either of those truths.
But the story of the sleeping giant is one of the most compelling football can offer up. Yes, these clubs should have to earn the right to be on the biggest stage, and to stay there, but there’s something missing when they aren’t a part of the show.
Underdogs are great, absolutely, and everyone deserves to have their chance at making it to the top, but nobody can keep punching above their weight forever. A sleeping giant offers so much promise of what could be. If only they could get it right — the right players, the right manager, the right sporting director — we tell ourselves the sky is the limit. It’s all the more disastrous when it all goes wrong, sure, but maybe next the next manager will be the guy, if only he can harness the club’s true untapped potential.
Next season will be all about staying up for Hamburg but do that, and who knows what could be around the corner? Whatever happens over the summer, I’ll be thrilled to have them back when next season begins.
Nice to have you back Ambrose. Looking forward to more of your insights.
Top stuff Lewis!