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The Ukraine flag in the Union fan block
Photo: CLEMENS BILAN / EPA
The last thing you have to tell the two clubs, Union Berlin and FC Sankt Pauli, is that sport and football are political.
"The duel of those who think differently" was the lyrically titled the meeting between the two clubs in the DFB Cup quarter-finals by the German press agency, both clubs are considered to be those with a genuinely political soul in top-flight football.
Not least because of this, the label »cult« has always been stuck to their cheeks, of which nobody can say exactly what it is supposed to mean.
When two such teams play against each other in a week when war has broken out in Europe, one would think that this would be an evening of political symbolism, an evening of making marks.
But above all it was a normal football evening.
Before the game, the stadium management played "Imagine" and also Bodo Wartke's anti-war song "Not in my name", and in the Union fan block on the back straight a single blue and yellow Ukraine flag could be seen, but that was it.
You quickly switched to soccer
At the start of the whistle there was a minute's silence, which was also held in the German stadiums last weekend, and Union spokesman Christian Arbeit read out a strangely vague message, garnished with a quotation from Kant, about how important peace is.
Then we switched to football.
You can say that's quite a lot, what else do you want, but somehow you expected more or something else, a small instruction to counteract your own powerlessness.
It's probably a complete overload.
And the longing for all the terrible news of the previous days, just to have a football night around, a bit of peace, a bit of the Union mascot club, who couldn't understand it?
Especially since there was a lot at stake for both teams that evening, quarter-finals of the cup in a season in which the top three in the Bundesliga table are no longer in competition;
an opportunity that suddenly pushes a club like Union Berlin into a secret favorite role
A reflection of the second half
A role that the Berliners only lived up to in terms of the result in the 2-1 (1-1) win over the Hamburg second division team.
It was a hard-won success, also promoted by two slips of Hamburg defenders in the decisive scenes.
A game like a mirror of the second half of the Berlin season.
You have to muddle through, little is currently happening on its own.
But when you're still seventh in the Bundesliga at the beginning of March and in the semi-finals of the cup, then you can't complain much.
Even if Berliners naturally don't find it easy to do without it.
The team of the always level-headed coach Urs Fischer is going through a new phase, and you could say it's a return to the roots.
After years of actually always going up, sporty, playful, infrastructural, we have now reached the point of maintaining the status quo - under difficult conditions.
The exits hurt
During the winter break, the team first gave up their defender Marvin Friedrich to Borussia Mönchengladbach, then shortly before the goals and transfers ended, Max Kruse, so to speak the only star in the team, left Union for Wolfsburg.
Those were sporty blows in the neck, Friedrich's power in aerial combat, his header strength with standards, the Berliners miss, they miss Kruse's savvy even more.
The game on this freezing March evening had enough Berlin offensive actions that made every Union fan sigh and ask what the old Sankt-Paulian Kruse would have made of the situation.
So far, Fischer and manager Oliver Ruhnert have gradually increased the squad since the promotion two years ago, qualitatively and quantitatively, now you have to step down noticeably for the first time.
The fact that Grischa Prömel, one of the players with Union DNA, announced his departure at the end of the season because he was drawn to TSG Hoffenheim gave the fans a real stab.
It was good to have someone like Kruse, but he wasn't a real Unioner.
Prömel, on the other hand, is a fan favorite.
His departure causes pain.
"Even Closer Together"
It's not been an easy few weeks, Union have suffered a dip with three Bundesliga defeats before beating Mainz on Saturday.
"We've come even closer together as a team over the past few difficult weeks," said Captain Christopher Trimmel after the game: "That's a phrase, but it's true."
How much effort it takes to win games at the moment was evident in almost every scene on Tuesday.
Against Hamburg, who were harmless offensively, but used an intelligent and elegant style of play in construction, Union sometimes looked as if they were the second division.
Wildly determined, but also wild in the game, with many passes you could at best guess their destination, there was a lot of banging, long balls from the defense with postcards for the strikers attached, basically a Union game like the team in theirs first half of the Bundesliga.
Hectic second half
Working class football, you could call it, and something like that is taken as a compliment in Köpenick, maybe not by the coach, but by the fans.
Before each game, the stadium anthem evokes the commitment of "the locksmith boys from Oberschoeneweide."
In the second half, Union also brought a rush into play, which one can at most benevolently assume that it was perhaps part of Fischer's match plan in order to unsettle the second division team through aggression.
It didn't do the hosts' game any good.
The bottom line was still a win, at the moment that's what's important.
"It only counts progressing," said winning goal scorer Andreas Voglsammer briefly and humorlessly.
Union is only one game away from the final in their own city, even if it's not their real home, this Olympic stadium in the west, quite far away from everything that defines Köpenick and 1. FC Union.
Olympic Stadium in sight
Nevertheless, it is a stadium with which the club has had good experiences this season, they played their European Cup games there in the Conference League, and in the round of 16 they beat Hertha in their living room.
In any case, there is no Union curse over the Olympic Stadium.
"We're in the semi-finals," spokesman Christian Arbeit cheered after the final whistle, the last time Union did that was 21 years ago, when it also went into the final, which they lost as a regional league team against the then still glorious FC Schalke .
When leaving the stadium in the late evening, one passed the fence at gate 8, where a fan had hung a dove of peace.
And already you had arrived from the change of football back in the reality of March 2022.