Horst Heldt, the sports director of the Bundesliga soccer club Union Berlin, couldn’t resist a little joke when he welcomed Steffen Baumgart as the new coach on Thursday. Heldt, 55, had already signed Baumgart, 52, once, in May 2021, at the time Heldt was manager at 1.FC Cologne. “Four weeks later I lost my job,” recalled Heldt. And smiled. Even though there are now groundbreaking games in the relegation battle – Union will face Heidenheim, Augsburg, Mainz and St. Pauli within the next four weeks – he is “very optimistic that this won’t happen again,” added Heldt, sounding as if he were he deliberately understates. Steffen Baumgart at Union – what could go wrong?
On Thursday, shortly before training began, he stood on the practice field, his hands hidden in his pockets, his head under a baseball cap, eyed by 740 people whose curiosity was great enough to endure the cold under Köpenick’s open air. The crowd favorite Baumgart was a player in Köpenick in the summer of 2002, and that was not only a topic in the Berlin media over the past few days, but also in the press conference on Thursday. Baumgart himself revealed it. “Shit, now we’re getting one of those old guys again!” said the current “Communications Director” Christian Arbeit when he, Baumgart, moved from his hometown club Hansa Rostock to Berlin. Arbeit, who chaired the conference, corrected Baumgart only slightly; At the time, he simply groaned that “another worn-out Bundesliga professional” was coming.
But this kind of quibble was only marginally relevant on Thursday. What was more important was what Baumgart remembered as his first official act in the An der Alten Försterei stadium. The way he pushed the then Mainz player and current Leipzig coach Marco Rose away in front of the little house, which is still embedded in the corner of the stadium’s stands to this day and houses a manual scoreboard, was groundbreaking: “After that, the whole block stood.”
His way of living football has remained the same over the years, and it has now been made part of the program. Probably to the delight of the Unioners. “We want to set this thing on fire,” said Baumgart and then paused, as if he had caught himself making an inadmissible tautology. Because the Alte Försterei is “always lit”.
Recently, however, that wasn’t always the case. There were reasons why Dane Bo Svensson, who was hired in the summer, had to leave as coach shortly before New Year’s Eve, after 17 points from 15 games and the last nine competitive games without a win. “We had the feeling that we were treading water.” , explained Heldt; and the fear of tumbling towards relegation was followed by the search for a successor, in which Baumgart was not the only candidate. But certainly the logical one: He knows the club.
Baumgart sees the squad ready for “intense football”
Baumgart was “left” by Hamburger SV at the end of November, as he himself put it, and he hardly hid the fact that he thought that was moderately justified. In the situation at the time, “other (contracts) would have been extended,” he said. He was obviously also affected by the fact that he was criticized in some media for letting HSV act too defensively. As if he hadn’t made a contribution to making HSV currently the most dangerous second division team (39 goals), he said. And anyone who wanted could also use Baumgart’s other statements on Thursday as proof that he had studied the press.
The Berlin newspapers had questioned whether Union’s players were really suitable for the high pressing that Baumgart preferred in his previous places of work. Baumgart demonstratively judged the squad to be “very, very good”, made up of “experienced and good footballers”, “in great shape” and therefore adequately prepared to play “intense football”. He refrained from making any declarations of principle. “Stop playing Baumgart-style football,” he said, “it’s about wanting to win games.” By looking for – and finding – the way forward.
This has been a major problem at Union recently. Only newly promoted FC St. Pauli (13) and bottom team VfL Bochum (12) have scored fewer goals than Union (14) this season. This really reminds me of my time at 1. FC Köln. In the season before his signing, the team scored 34 goals in 34 games, and in the following, perhaps Baumgart’s most successful coaching season, there were 52 goals. It has not yet been decided whether 1. FC Union will look for new attackers in the transfer window that has now opened.
Baumgart’s predecessor Svensson had preferred to leave out a few of the newcomers from last summer – especially the strikers Ivan Prtajin and Andrij Ilic – and that was moderately well received by the management. Baumgart now wants to get a more precise and, above all, own picture of the players with existing contractual relationships; In Laszlo Benes he also meets a player again who he was very reluctant to let move to Union at HSV last summer, but who was unable to get off to a good start in Köpenick. Now Baumgart is supposed to revolutionize him and the team – but not the merchandising program. The sale of new flat caps is not planned, said Head of Work Communications: “We have not hired a mascot, but rather a successful Bundesliga coach.”
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