Four years after leaving, Maximilian Berwein returns to FC Penzberg.
Coach Martin Wagner is happy, at the same time he warns of excessive expectations of the player who has come a special way.
Penzberg - How short four years can feel. Four years after leaving, Maximilian Berwein is returning to FC Penzberg - and the essentials have stayed the same. He still saved 80 percent of the phone numbers in the player group, before the first training session he had a coffee with Marco Hiry, in the FC parlor, coach Martin Wagner (who is actually new to him) gave him his old number, the "7" In the hand. Well, what has changed in Penzberg, Mr Berwein? “Nothing at all,” replies the 25-year-old on his return to the new old club.
Of course, you can't say that with a view to your career. The stations in Oberau, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Garching carried him up the mountain, at the top of which the professional area was waiting for him. But Maximilian Berwein never made it to the top because the pandemic shock frozen an entire market. "It was not foreseeable how long Corona would drag on and how much it would affect the third division and the regional division," says the Eschenloher. His consulting agency organized trial training sessions for him in Austria and Slovakia, and he was in contact with various clubs in Germany. He lists Essen, Schweinfurt and Bayreuth. But no offer suited him because no one wanted to take the risk of tying a 25-year-old late starter for the long term. They only offered one-year contracts. “At 25 you should look far if you want to build a family and a house.You shouldn't just look from year to year. "
Trial training in Austria and Slovakia
With every audition, with every rejected contract, only one feeling solidified over the months: "You are stagnating in life." The dream of being a professional footballer takes you a long way, but sometimes also on a path that ends in a dead end.
“At some point there is a point where you say: It can't go on like this.” Nine quarters of a year ago Maximilian Berwein made “a clear cut,” as he says, stopped playing football and concentrated on his family, his girlfriend and the profession, next year he will be trained to become a master metalworker.
He didn't miss football. That's how honest the top striker is. And that despite the fact that they advertised him early on, the Penzbergers, as well as the Garmisch-Partenkircheners and other clubs in the area. But it was only when the question arose in his family environment why he wasn't actually playing a little football again that he seriously dealt with the topic. That was only a few weeks ago. After the first training session last Tuesday, however, he already noticed: the fire is burning again. He calls his move to FC Penzberg “the most logical and sensible way for me to play football again”. Berwein plans to move to the south of Munich. He considers the Eschenlohe motorway axis (where he works in the family business) - Penzberg - Munich to be ideal for combining work, girlfriend and leisure time,"Without anything being neglected". In Garmisch-Partenkirchen this would have been less easy to accomplish.
The contact with FC Penzberg has never been broken
The contact with FCP never broke off anyway, no matter how many coaches have trained the district division in the meantime.
Last Sunday, the day after the victory over Unterpfaffenhofen, coach Martin Wagner finally found out about Berwein's acceptance.
"Such a cool piece of news after the series of victories," enthuses the Habacher.
His first thought: “It will hit like a bomb.
I was really happy. ”The two of them knew each other from the Bavarian Indoor Championships 2020, which Berwein competed for FCP.
That's when he got to know him as a “super guy” who “we can use” - brief pause for thought - “that every team can use”.
Nevertheless, Wagner warns against excessive expectations. After nine months without the ball on your foot, you have to keep the ball flat. The match practice goes off in him, as is the lightness of the feet, the change of pace, and the first passes often landed next to the goal, revealed Berwein after his first session. But the machine was started again in the second half of the training. Wagner saw the radiance he was exerting on the boys. “It's a huge thing for them. Who has the opportunity to play in the team with someone like that? ”The club benefits from Maximilian Berwein in two ways.
An extra week now remains to prepare for game one, the derby against raising.
Penzberg is free of play this weekend.
It will only reach one hundred percent after all winter preparations have been made.
Especially since Maximilian Berwein should also play in the Futsal Bundesliga.
He doesn't even want to predict how long he'll stay in Penzberg.
"For me, everything went so chaotically from year to year," says the 25-year-old.
The tendency is there to play at FCP beyond the summer.
“But I don't want to lean too far out of the window.
You can only fall on your face. "
