Three of the eight German clubs to ever win a European competition (ignoring Magdeburg, who won the Cup Winners’ Cup as an East German club) now ply their trade in the 2. Bundesliga. They have all started the season poorly and two of them have been facing the very real threat of points deductions.
And it’s all a pretty new development. All three were playing in continental competitions in recent memory. Werder Bremen were Europa League runners-up in 2009 and played in the Champions League two seasons later. Schalke were also in the Champions League that season, making it all the way to the semi-finals, and were most recently in the knockout stages of UEFA’s premier competition in 2019. And Hamburg were beaten by Bremen in the 2009 Europa League semi-finals and lost at the same stage again a year later.
Those Traditionsvereine (traditional clubs) of German football have been replaced at the top table by modern outfits with more financial power from external sources – the likes of RB Leipzig, VfL Wolfsburg, TSG Hoffenheim — and traditionally smaller clubs, often from smaller areas, who have worked harder and smarter to earn their place in the Bundesliga. Where the likes of Mainz, Augsburg and Union Berlin have been careful not to invest beyond their means, looking for younger players or those from lesser-known leagues to improve their squads rather than handing out big contracts to proven mediocrity, Bremen, Schalke and HSV have not.
They bought into the belief, the mystique, of their status as traditional giants. And they’re paying the price.
One win in four matches.
“What can we do?” striker Niclas Füllkrug said after Werder Bremen drew 0-0 with 10-man Karlsruhe last Saturday. “You can just try, as a team, to get out of it again.”
We’re just four games into the league season and Bremen are already in a funk. In the second tier for the first time in 30 years, they’ve picked up just five points from their opening four games, are out of the DFB Pokal, sent packing by third tier VfL Osnabrück, and have scored just once (in a 4-1 defeat) in their last three games.
And it could yet get worse. Something of a firesale has taken place this summer, with the club selling Milot Rashica, Josh Sargent, Ludwig Augustinsson, Max and Johannes Eggestein, and Yuya Osako. Kevin Möhwald is likely to be next and almost nobody has been brought in as Bremen look to fight off the threat of insolvency.
The club have faced financial troubles for most of the last decade but appeared to be back on course before the pandemic. But that, and relegation, has left its existence in the balance once again as they juggle the pandemic, relegation, and their existing debts. Bremen have projected a loss of €26m for the year while already contending with debts of €77m. The club were only awarded their DFL license for the season under the proviso they meet certain conditions, perhaps explaining the number of sales and lack of movement in, with a points deduction a real possibility before those sales were made.
Louis Beyer (Borussia Mönchengladbach) and Linton Maina (Hannover 96) have this week rejected moves to the Weser, while Bremen have reneged on a deal to sign Giorgios Giakoumakis, who was the Eredivisie’s top scorer last season despite playing for relegated VVV-Venlo, instead opting for a cheaper option (with wages included) in Marvin Ducksch.
But things could be worse. Bremen have at least played well in games against Düsseldorf and Karlsruhe. There is a way out of this mess this season. The same can’t be said for everyone.
Things are even bleaker at Schalke. One win in four matches.
Just 10 years on from a Champions League semi-final appearance, Schalke were relegated last season with the third worst points tally in Bundesliga history. Just three years after finishing the 2017/18 season in second, the Königsblauen were relegated with three wins from 34 games.
Like Bremen, there are enormous financial concerns. Thursday’s edition of kicker says the club “urgently depends on every penny” and “continue to be threatened by a six point deduction” as they look to fulfil the requirements of their league license by mid-September.
Also like Bremen, they have also already lost a game in the second tier 4-1, putting in a hopeless display against Jahn Regensburg at the weekend.
“It’s tough. The result speaks for itself. It was a really shit game,” Simon Terodde told Sky after the defeat. The striker has four goals in as many games, the one green shoot from the season so far, and is already looking like a very smart piece of business.
Since 2015/16 he’s played four full seasons at this level, scoring 25, 25, 29 and 24 goals. He will surely slow down someday, he’s 33 now, but it looks like Schalke will get at least one good season out of him.
Schalke coach Dimitrios Grammozis already looks unlikely to last that long. It was only a few months ago that he spoke about implementing a “dominant” style, putting out a team that “wants to have the ball” and can create “plenty of chances” in the final third. We’re four games into the new season and 11 clubs have completed more passes than Schalke in the league this season, seven have taken more shots, and only two have conceded more shots.
A lack of preparation is no excuse — Grammozis took over in March, before last season was over, and the players reported back for pre-season in June, five weeks before the season started — and the coach has already criticised the makeup of his squad in a moment of desperation.
“We have to keep working,” he said at the weekend. “I don’t want to use it as an excuse that we have a hotchpotch group. We have to become a team quickly, we can’t be allowed to put on a display like this.”
The squad may be newly-assembled and contain some young players but there is plenty of talent, plenty of potential, and plenty of experience within it. Comments like that from the coach will only put a target on his own back and that, it seems, is exactly what has happened.
“It’s not enough for our ambitions and it has nothing to do with a ‘hotchpotch’ team,” sporting director Rouwen Schröder told BILD this week.
“That’s no excuse or way to apologise for the game. We expect more and so do the players.”
When things are going badly, you should probably try to avoid making enemies. Upsetting your boss and your own players? That’s a way to quickly ensure you’ll become the fifth coach to lose the Schalke job in the last 12 months.
And then there’s Hamburger SV. One win in four matches.
The once-upon-a-time Bundesliga-Dino, previously the only club to feature in every Bundesliga season since its 1962 inception, are now into their fourth consecutive second tier campaign.
“Today, above all else, we have to say, that in the 45th minute we went 2-1 up and we managed to concede an equaliser before half-time. At that point you just can’t concede,” Hamburg goalkeeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes on Sunday.
But it was to the surprise of absolutely nobody that they did.
This has been the story of HSV since their long overdue relegation. Having barely survived in 2016 and 2017, relegation in 2018 brought the chance for a fresh start. And so does every new season since. Hamburg are never truly in crisis mode but also never really out of it. A last-minute equaliser, or one on the stroke of half-time, is a common affair that never sends them spiralling, it just denies them glory.
In 2018/19 they were top of the league at the end of February before an eight-game winless run ended hopes of promotion. In 2019/20 they were still in the top two throughout February, before a run of one win in six damaged their hopes, and it was still all in their own hands when they took one point from the final three games to miss out. And in 2020/21 they were top as March began and second when it ended but won just two of their last eight, a run that started with them drawing 3-3 from 3-0 up at Hannover.
And here they are, rise and repeat, aiming for promotion again.
The thing is, these three powerhouses of German football are just a few correct decisions (and a bit of luck) away from everything looking pretty rosy. Appoint the right coach, target young players, develop from their extensive and fruitful (Schalke in particular) academies. The fanbases are there and the infrastructures are there. It would surprise nobody if one (or any) of them were playing in Europe again just a few years from now.
But it would also come as no surprise if they ended up in the third tier.
HSV, three-time Bundesliga winners and one-time European Cup winners, should have served as the warning to Bremen and Schalke not to overspend, to recruit with more nuance, to take a more modern approach and be more careful with their finances.
And while one win in four isn’t enough because all three clubs are only interested in looking up, the threat of them falling further is very real. Just 23 years ago, Kaiserslautern won the Bundesliga. Their record in the third tier this season is even worse than their fellow struggling Traditionsverine, Lautern have won just one in five to find themselves staring at another relegation battle.
HSV were the warning that the others didn’t learn from. Those German giants now in the second tier can’t afford Kaiserslautern to become the same. It can always get worse, even for Germany’s biggest clubs.