Like his new club, the Germany wing-back has taken a hard road to the top and both can sense a big opportunity this season“I’m knackered,” Robin Gosens told Sky. “But very, very happy.” What started out looking like the most forgiving, gentle induction into life together for him and Union Berlin didn’t turn out quite like that. It was something far more satisfying instead.Gosens had waited a long time for this, his full Bundesliga debut, just like Union have spent a long while working themselves into this position. No longer the underdog but the ogre, they ruthlessly crushed the hopes of Darmstadt in the promoted club’s first game at their Böllenfalltor home since arriving back in the big time. Union...
German football’s newest force ended a historic week by being ‘shaken off like a handful of snow’ by the ‘irritated’ championsUrs Fischer knew. In a season where everything, anything has been possible for Union Berlin and after in a week in which the bar being raised even higher didn’t feel like a pinch, there was still a frontier too far. And this was it.“We had no chance,” said Union’s defender Robin Knoche after a 3-0 defeat at Bayern Munich in Sunday’s late game, a loss that will not ruin the Berliners’ phenomenal season but which could have been so, so much worse without the intervention of Frederik Rønnow, whose string of face-saving saves included one literally with his face, late...
Hertha were motivated and applied themselves well against city rivals Union. The problem was the resultIt was always going to be aesthetics, and so it proved. The importance of only the eighth top-flight derby between Hertha and Union was everywhere you looked – not least in the sold-out stands of the Olympiastadion, such a contrast to the relatively paltry turnout for Wednesday night’s humiliating hammering for Hertha at the hands of Wolfsburg. The problem was that, even at such an early stage of this as an elite-level rivalry, we already knew which way this was going, and so it proved. Hertha’s coach Sandro Schwarz had suggested in Thursday’s pre-match press conference that the result didn’t matter as much as the...
Urs Fischer’s team were brutal, cold and unforgiving against Schalke, not the cuddly club of football fablesThose records keep tumbling. Their longest top-flight unbeaten run (now 11) was extended. This is the first time they have gone unbeaten in five Bundesliga away games. Add to that, of course, the big one – this was their biggest ever Bundesliga win, at the home of one of German football’s iconic clubs in front of a sold-out, 62,000-plus crowd. Union Berlin are not a curio, not a fleeting story and more than a minor irritant to the Bundesliga’s established order.Saturday’s 6-1 win at Schalke took Union level on points with Bayern Munich at the summit, planting their flag again in unexpectedly high grounds,...
Bayern Munich might win their 11th title in a row, but between now and then we can enjoy another fascinating seasonMeet the new boss, just like the old boss. Though the opening weekend of the Bundesliga had its familiar themes and outcomes, it most definitely had a story to tell. Some will tut or shrug, but they shouldn’t. “You don’t go to the theatre because you’re wondering how the swan from Swan Lake will turn out,” as Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Martin Schneider put it.Let’s start with what the world most expected, or at least feared. Bayern Munich began 2022-23 like a hurricane, not so much pulling back the curtain to the campaign on Friday night at Eintracht Frankfurt as tearing it...