At the very end, Steffen Baumgart was asked how he personally felt about returning to the Bundesliga stage. The new coach of 1. FC Union Berlin, most recently active as coach of 1. FC Köln in the top German league in December 2023, laughed to himself and breathed a muffled “Wow” into the microphone. But he quickly began a declaration of love for football in general and for his job as a coach in particular, regardless of the league and some of the difficulties that this work sometimes entails. “But I love the job, and I think it shows,” said Baumgart.
It remains to be seen whether this was visible to him at that moment after the 0-2 (0-1) defeat at 1. FC Heidenheim on Saturday, including the sending off and suspension for his left-back Tom Rothe. His hymn to football and his coaching career was also remarkable in that Baumgart had just enough reason to doubt his love. Because one can hardly imagine a much more unfortunate start to a new term in office. It was a start with a lot of problems, and after the tenth competitive game without a win, the Köpenickers are now in a relegation battle. The lead over third-from-bottom Heidenheim in relegation place 16 is still three points, assuming the latest point deduction holds. When Baumgart took office a few days earlier there were still seven points.
The 53-year-old started working at Union on January 2nd. But before the first game in Heidenheim, the 17 points that had been laboriously won without Baumgart were temporarily reduced to 16 because the DFB sports court ruled the 1-1 draw against Bochum on December 14th as 0: rated 2. The massive criticism of this judgment continued two days later in Heidenheim. Union President Dirk Zingler described the sports court’s rating as “completely far-fetched” and said Bochum was using the misconduct of a fan “to gain a sporting advantage. I think that’s an unfair scandal.” Zingler’s finding that this “cannot be the right judgment because it massively interferes with the competition” was shared by Heidenheim’s CEO Holger Sanwald, who is affected as an uninvolved third party in the relegation battle. Sanwald said he “couldn’t do anything with the verdict” and thought it was “wrong” and that it was “not a good verdict for football.” Union has already announced its objection to the judgment, which is not yet legally binding, and, according to Zingler, wants to “go through all instances”; Heidenheim reserves the right to take legal action.
Heidenheim’s winter signing Krätzig scores his first Bundesliga goal
For Baumgart, this prologue was compounded by an unfortunate run of play on his debut for Union in Heidenheim. The Berliners started out confidently and had two great chances, including Jordan’s turn-on shot, which goalkeeper Kevin Müller directed onto the crossbar. Heidenheim, on the other hand, used his first shot on goal to take the lead through Frans Krätzig, who, after a counterattack and Leonardo Scienza’s pass, finished directly with the inside left (17th). Twenty minutes later, Rothe allowed himself to improperly receive the ball and make an emergency stop against Sirlord Conteh, which led to him being sent off and suspended for Wednesday’s game against Augsburg. Nevertheless, Union came close to equalizing. Only late on did substitute Adrian Beck use a rebound to make it 2-0 (83′). Despite the defeat, “the boys did a lot of things well,” said Baumgart, highlighting the outnumbered resistance. Captain Christopher Trimmel also saw reasons for confidence in the content. “I also saw a lot of positive things,” he said.
Only the Heidenheim team could be happy about consistently successful debuts after nine competitive games without a win. This was particularly true for the 21-year-old Krätzig, who scored his first Bundesliga goal. After the disappointing first part of the season at VfB Stuttgart, the loan player from FC Bayern was now a mainstay of the success. “I’m happy to be able to play here and show what I’m capable of,” said Krätzig, adding that “a lot has been resolved after an instructive and difficult time.” Coach Frank Schmidt praised the positive spirit of the arrival and also recalled the valuable contributions of the other newcomer, attacker Budu Zivzivadze from second division club Karlsruher SC. At the same time, Schmidt said: “It could only have been a starting signal. We have to keep going, we still need a lot of points to stay in the league.” This also applies to Union and Baumgart after the unfortunate start to his term in office.
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