Comment on Tim Walter’s dismissal from Hull City

While the 1. FC Union players were celebrating their promotion in May 2019, the then Berlin midfielder Manuel Schmiedebach had an interesting idea: How about sharing this moment with coach Tim Walter? The Berliners were standing on a stage, the party sound was booming through the An der Alten Försterei stadium, and one or two sips had already been taken from huge beer glasses. Schmiedebach raised his cell phone to the microphone and started a Facetime call to Walter to give him a kind of apology in front of the assembled audience: for the fact that they, the ultra-conservative Unioners, had dared to get promoted to the first league without playing football. From Tim Walter’s point of view, they had broken this taboo: Union was “not interested” in playing football anyway, the then Holstein Kiel coach had complained a few months earlier – after his team’s 2-0 defeat, mind you. Schmiedebach couldn’t reach Walter, but he still shared his message with the partygoers: “Here are the ones who can’t play football but got promoted anyway!”