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<\/p>\nUnion Berlin secured Champions League football for the first time <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cJa so eisern wie Granit, so wie einst Real Madrid und so zogen wir in die Bundesliga ein und wir werden auch mal deutscher Meister sein (Irgendwann).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYeah, so iron, like granite, just like Real Madrid, so we\u2019ll move into the Bundesliga, and we\u2019ll also become German champions.\u201d<\/p>\n They could sing that at Union Berlin, safe in the knowledge they would never actually play Real Madrid. It was a fanciful chant, from a different footballing universe. In 2005-06, when Sergio Ramos was making his Real debut, Union were playing in the Oberliga-Nord, a regional league of clubs in the old East Germany. Less than two decades later, Union\u2019s players and staff and their families gathered to watch the Champions League draw. Eventually, there were two possible pools for them: B and C. They were placed in the latter.<\/p>\n And then it became clear: they would meet Real as peers. \u201cSurreal and overwhelming,\u201d said Christian Arbeit, the matchday announcer at Union\u2019s Alte Forsterei ground and a lifelong fan. \u201cFor the very first time we are playing the biggest competition in club football and meet the biggest club in the world and it is the very first game.\u201d For Union, life as a Champions League club starts at the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n It caps the rise of Union, the underdog club from East Berlin. They haven\u2019t become German champions yet, though they led the table after two games of this campaign and finished fourth last season. They have gatecrashed the European elite with an old-fashioned formula, an almost defiant anti-commercialism that has given them an authenticity that, paradoxically, some corporations find attractive and with a ground that was rebuilt by the fans. Arbeit is one of them, a supporter for almost four decades who took a few days\u2019 leave from his job at a cinema company. \u201cI knew I could never come back if I wouldn\u2019t have helped,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n Union could celebrate a remarkable Champions League qualification last year <\/p>\n Without Arbeit, without the 2,333 supporters who provided 140,000 hours of voluntary work in 2008 and 2009, it is safe to say Union would not have reached the Bundesliga, let alone the Champions League. There was nothing inevitable about this, about the organic, improbable surge of the people\u2019s club from the DDR.<\/p>\n The people saved Union when the city of Berlin and the district of Kopenick, each having done nothing to maintain the Alte Forsterei, handed it over to the club, but at a point when the German Football Federation denied it a licence to host matches; unless it was refurbished, anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cA very heartwarming 13 months of a building site,\u201d Arbeit remembered. \u201cThere was around about 100 people each day \u2013 you couldn\u2019t employ more \u2013 and 80 of them had never built something before. They were like me \u2013 cinema people, teachers, sales people \u2013 and you had 20 guys, proper building people, and they had to guide us through this building site. It is kind of a miracle. We have told this story a million times but still when I do talk about it, it gives me goosebumps because it is such a crazy story.\u201d<\/p>\n The miracle had its roots in a different country and a different time. Union were not the dominant club in the East German capital; that mantle resided with Dynamo, who were in a run of 10 consecutive titles when a 12-year-old Arbeit first went to a game in 1986 with his father, an engineer who tended to spend his spare time playing the trombone in a Dixieland jazz band.<\/p>\n Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n Sign up now for a 30-day free trial<\/p>\n Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n Sign up now for a 30-day free trial<\/p>\n Champions League qualification capped a remarkable rise for Union <\/p>\n \u201cUntil that day I was not interested in football and we came to the stadium and it was a strange world I had never experienced before,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cThere were grown-up men singing and chanting and shouting and swearing and using words I was not allowed to use at home so it was a huge impression of a strange way of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n That freedom brought a contrast with Dynamo Berlin, the club of the notorious Stasi chief Erich Mielke and who benefitted from his patronage. \u201cYou don\u2019t go to the secret police unless you have to,\u201d Arbeit rationalised. And so Union attracted a different crowd. \u201cIt was more what we nowadays would call alternative culture: the young guys with longer hair, with parka jackets. The club was not an opposition club or a rebel movement because that would not have been possible. But I remember when my classmates noticed I go to Union. It was: \u2018They are so-called rowdies and hooligans.\u2019 They were considered a wild bunch, the Union fans. But I experienced them mostly like they are today, very engaged in supporting the team. In funny ways, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n Relegation was an occupational hazard for Union back then. German reunification brought other problems. \u201cWe played in the third division and it was very regional, it was more or less a Berlin-based league,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cYou had to play on Sunday at 11 in the morning in the drizzling rain and it was about 700 people turning up; it was really depressing. The people had so many more existential problems: How can I find a job? How can I feed my children?\u201d<\/p>\n And Union disappeared off the radar of many people, re-emerging with a first indication of their 21st<\/sup>-century propensity to upset more fancied teams. They had spent the 1990s acquiring the nickname of Unpromotables as, stuck in the third division, they found a range of ways not to go up. They were \u201cUnaufstiegbar\u201d. Twice even winning their league was not enough; financial issues meant they were not granted the licence needed to play in a higher division.<\/p>\n And then, in 2001, they got promoted and reached the German Cup final, knocking out Borussia Monchengladbach and Bochum on their way. \u201cIt was like, wow, how did we do that?\u201d Arbeit recalled. \u201cAfter many years of being ignored, everyone noticed us.\u201d<\/p>\n Schalke defeated Union in the 2001 German Cup final <\/p>\n The route to the Bernabeu nonetheless involved going backwards. Union were relegated twice in four years after the German Cup final. Short of funds, they needed the unpaid labour of their supporters to ensure they could keeping playing at the Alte Forsterei. But it helped they had a loyal fanbase: their status as outsiders may have benefited them whereas Dynamo, the former secret-police club, are now found in the Regionalliga-Nordost.<\/p>\n Along the way, Union have acquired different rivals within the same city. They went up to the Bundesliga in 2019, a year after the appointment of the catalytic manager Urs Fischer. And then Hertha Berlin got in touch.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember when we first got promoted to the Bundesliga, even in the congratulations was included, \u2018congratulations, Union, we are happy and we are looking forward to six points,\u2019\u201d said Arbeit. Last season, as Hertha propped up the Bundesliga, Union took six points at their neighbours\u2019 expense.<\/p>\n There was long the sense that Berlin, one of Europe\u2019s great capitals, ought to have a Champions League club. Hertha thought it should be them. No one thought it would be Union. The investor Lars Windhorst put \u20ac374m into Hertha and got just \u20ac15m back. Hertha spent more than \u20ac100m on signings in 2019-20, a season of four managers and a bottom-half finish. The most expensive of those buys, Lucas Tousart, joined Union for a cut-price fee this summer. \u201cThey manoeuvred themselves into financial and organisational instability,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cWe had not that much money but we had a very stable organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n Hertha\u2019s grandiose dreams extended to Union territory. Dirk Zingler, Union\u2019s president since 2004 and another lifelong fan, has described them as an East Berlin club; in a city that was divided for almost three decades, the distinction matters. \u201cWe would never go out with the approach to say we are the one club for Berlin,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cThe funny thing is Hertha did that for a very long time. They tried a lot of public campaigns to say that: \u2018one city, one club, we are the club for the whole city\u2019.\u201d Instead, Hertha\u2019s members are largely in the west, Union\u2019s generally in the east.<\/p>\n Union Berlin\u2019s loyal fans have stuck with them <\/p>\n Now Champions League football will come to Hertha: or their ground, anyway. When Union first qualified for Europe, Uefa did not allow them to play their 2021-22 Conference League games at the Alte Forsterei. Now they had a choice: a ground with a capacity of 22,000, with fewer than 4,000 seats, but a home of symbolic importance, or a massive venue. Real Madrid, Napoli and Braga will go to West Berlin, to the Olympiastadion. So will thousands of fans, with cheap tickets. \u201cThe Champions League is for all Unioners,\u201d said Zingler at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was one of the most difficult decisions we had to make,\u201d said Arbeit. \u201cWe always say it is the people we are doing it for. It is something extraordinary, it is possible it is the only time in our history we reach that competition and that is why we decided to show it to as many people as possible. Still we are a bit sad.\u201d<\/p>\n Even Union have to compromise sometimes. But not often. Their matchday is a different experience. \u201cWe want to keep the dignity of the football match itself,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want any advertising Zeppelins flying around at the half-time break and no kiss-cam and no T-shirt gun. We don\u2019t make any noise or any announcements in a commercial way and just a little bit, this is already something special in German football. We don\u2019t do a half-time show with sponsored games or quiz shows. You can\u2019t win some products. You have no entertainment before the game.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people come here and meet their friends and they can have their beer and sausage. Just 20 minutes before kick-off, I just come on the pitch and say hello and introduce the guest team and then our team.\u201d Union nevertheless have a corporate shirt sponsor, Paramount, and JD Sports on their sleeves, but on their own terms. \u201cWe develop in sponsorship terms from regional and local companies to international,\u201d Arbeit said.<\/p>\n If Union may be Germany\u2019s least commercial club, their opposites are the other East German representatives in the Champions League: RB Leipzig, propelled by the Red Bull group. \u201cFrom the view of our fans, it was about establishing a monumental marketing piece in football for a product which is Red Bull,\u201d Arbeit said. \u201cWe are the last protesting audience: whenever we play against Leipzig our fans spend the first 15 minutes in silence.\u201d<\/p>\n If Leipzig \u2013 parachuted into a city with two established clubs, Chemie and Lokomotive \u2013 are the break from the past and Union a link with it, that still did not bring Ostalgie<\/em>, the nostalgia for East Germany; DDR flags have been seen at other grounds behind the old Iron Curtain, but not Union\u2019s.<\/p>\n Union and RB Leipzig have a fierce rivalry <\/p>\n But they were born in the DDR. About three-quarters of off-field staff are supporters, some converts after they start working for the club. For most, it is not a stepping stone. A community club nevertheless display their ambition. As a newly-promoted club, they signed the former double Bundesliga winners Neven Subotic and Christian Gentner. A year later, Max Kruse, once the enfant terrible of German football, joined: he ended his first season with an injury-time goal on the final day to take Union into Europe. \u201cSince then, everyone in our surroundings believes we can sign whoever we want. We are not afraid of calling someone up and asking,\u201d Arbeit said.<\/p>\n That policy reaped a reward this summer. Enter Robin Gosens, whose final contribution in an Internazionale shirt was to almost equalise in last year\u2019s Champions League final, and, most remarkably, Leonardo Bonucci. The Euro 2020 winner and Italy captain left Juventus to play Champions League football with Union, a sentence that would long have sounded ludicrous.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was perfectly prepared,\u201d Arbeit explained. \u201cWhen we had talks with him, he knew almost everything about our club; that was for us kind of a surprise because we didn\u2019t expect this guy to know we have three sides of standing terraces. That meant to us that this person might perfectly fit because he could have gone to America or Saudi Arabia to take the next 20 million or anything but it looked like that he wanted for himself something special as well. When I was a boy, I always thought, why don\u2019t players in the late years of their career, when they made their money already, why don\u2019t they do something nice? And now I experienced that.\u201d<\/p>\n Union\u2019s unique sales pitch is to offer less money. After all, they have no billionaire backer, a small stadium, low ticket prices and eschew some commercial deals. They have got players to buy into them, into the dream. Their wage bill last season, before bonuses for Champions League qualification, was in the bottom half of the Bundesliga\u2019s, perhaps the bottom third. The chances are that striker Kevin Behrens can afford a car but, after he scored an opening-day hat-trick against Mainz this season, he was spotted cycling home. Only at Union, perhaps.<\/p>\nRecommended<\/h3>\n
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