Union Berlin is the most surprising team this season in European football.
And despite the amazing things this season has already done, this coming week could be the biggest in the club's 117-year history.
If they beat Schalke tonight, the weakest team in the Bundesliga (1:6 to Union in the first round), they will qualify for the top of the table in Germany.
On Thursday, they will host Ajax in the second leg of the Europa League, after a 0:0 draw in Amsterdam, and in a week, Union will face Bayern Munich in the season's game. Bayern lost 3:2 to Menschlangedbach yesterday (Saturday) and the game next Sunday becomes even more critical.
Union Berlin champion?
Despite Bayern's loss, few believe such a thing is possible.
After all, it was only four years ago that she qualified for the Bundesliga for the first time.
Its budget is tiny compared to Bayern, Dortmund and Leipzig.
And yet, what Union is doing this season is just crazy.
The draw against Ajax came after 6 consecutive wins in the league.
Last week she defeated R.B.
Leipzig, who have not lost in their previous 18 games.
Onion celebrates another victory, photo: Getty
A lot of credit goes to the Swiss coach Urs Fischer, the man who promoted it from the second division - and who lost with Basel to Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Champions League playoffs in 2016. Fischer is not looking for beautiful football, but efficient. Union scored only 35 goals (compared to Bayern's 59), but Won more games than the champion, their top scorer, Sraldo Becker, has only 7 goals.
The most famous name in the squad is Rani Khedira - and that's only because he is the younger brother of former star Sami Khedira.
The romance of Onion is not found on the grass, but in everything that happens around, such as the modest stadium (22 thousand seats) with the charming name "Home of the Old Forester".
Indeed, to reach it you walk through a small forest.
It has only one grandstand, with 3,617 seats.
The other three are standing stands, as before.
Fisher on the lines, photo: EPA
Manual scoreboard for tradition
At Union they decided to jealously guard the family atmosphere and community values.
The audience includes many families and adults, almost all of them from the Kopnik neighborhood, which used to be part of East Germany.
The wealth and flamboyance of West Berlin is not here, and it is important for the club to distinguish itself from the excessive commercialism of the other clubs.
There is an electronic scoreboard, but to preserve history there is also a manual scoreboard.
One of the workers replaces the wooden digits by hand every time a goal is scored.
To understand the meaning of Union we must go back to the days when Germany and Berlin were divided.
Until the fall of the wall in the early 1990s, there was a communist government in East Germany, and the citizens suffered under the harsh hand of the secret police, the "Stasi".
penetration.
The most familiar name, photo: Getty
Dynamo Berlin, the team of the "Stasi", won almost all the titles then, since the rivals were afraid to beat them.
Union Berlin then became the symbol of opposition to the government, and this was done in creative ways.
When the team won a free kick and the opposing team would put up a wall, the fans would sing: "The wall must fall!"
After the fall of the wall and the unification, Union Berlin, like the other clubs of East Germany, almost disappeared.
Without money, the team was relegated to the fourth division and less than a thousand spectators came to the games.
To keep the team alive, an operation called "Bleed for Onion" began among the fans.
Hundreds of fans donated blood to the hospitals and transferred the money to the club coffers.
With a supreme effort, Union returned to the second league within four years, and then it was decided that the stadium must be renovated.
Once again the fans came and about 2,300 of them contributed 140 thousand working hours to help with the renovation.
But all this belongs to the distant past.
Today Union is at the top of German football and no one will dare to underestimate the team from East Berlin.
And even if you don't win the championship, Union will be consoled by the fact that next season the old forest will host games in the Champions League.
Union's audience.
Close to champions, photo: Getty
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