Sometimes the bandwagon breaks down
Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?
Back in March, I wrote about the surprising rise of German football team, FC Union Berlin. It was a great story about a small club coming from out of nowhere, from the remnants of the East German league, that made it to the Bundesliga top tier, and pulled off a fourth place finish, which earned them a spot in the Champions League.
It seemed that everything was coming up Union Berlin and its Swiss manager, Urs Fischer, was hailed as a genius. He was the Bundesliga manager of the year for 2022-23.
And Union started the season with two impressive 4-1 wins over Mainz and Darmstadt. Everything was looking great for Union on August 26. Since that date, Union has not won a match. Not in the Bundesliga. Not in the Champions League. Not even in the German cup competition, the DFB-Pokal.
In 14 matches, Union lost 13 of them. In the other one, they fought to a 1-1 draw at Napoli in the Champions League. And that draw convinced Napoli to fire its manager.
After a 4-0 loss to league leader Bayer Leverkeusen, Union and Fischer parted ways.
In the interim, the club has promoted youth coach Mario Grote to lead the senior squad. And, the club has appointed the first ever female assistant coach in the Bundesliga, Marie-Louise Eta.
You may be asking? Just what went wrong with Union Berlin that they slipped so far? Was it injuries? Did the team not have the depth to play in the Bundesliga and the Champions League? Was the team unlucky? The answer is well, sort of all of them, but luck may be the biggest factor.
There is an advanced stat in soccer called Expected Goals. It is abbreviated as xG. It has a defensive counterpart that goes by xGA (Expected Goals Allowed). To make this relatively short, xG represents how many goals a team SHOULD score based on their chances in the offensive end. xGA is similar just on the defensive end.
Last season, Union Berlin had an xG of 37.9 goals and an xGA of 42.6 goals. This covered the 34 matches played in the Bundesliga. So over the course of the season, a team like Union Berlin should have been 4.7 goals in the red.
What happened on the field? Union scored 51 goals and gave up 38. They outperformed what they should have done on offense by nearly 13 goals. Is that the result of brilliant coaching and superior tactics or mostly just luck? Before you answer. Here’s this year’s stats (courtesy of fbref.com)
xG: 12.2 goals
xGA: 16.6 goals
Goals scored: 11 goals
Goals allowed: 26 goals
Few things in life are crueler than the regression to the mean. Union had pretty much everything go right for them last season. And nothing has gone right for them this season. And top level soccer is not kind if teams are prone to making slight mistakes. The players are incredibly gifted and every mistake is pounced on.
Presently, Union Berlin sits in 18th place in the Bundesliga. How many teams are in the Bundesliga? 18. So this is not a good place to be. In the Bundesliga, the 17th and 18th place teams are automatically relegated while the team in 16th goes into a playoff against the team that finishes third in the second division.
Union Berlin is level on points with FC Koln (Cologne) with 6 points, but trails on goal difference. Mainz is in the playoff spot with 7 points. Darmstadt has 8 points and Bochum has 9 and both of those teams were predicted to be relegated at the start of the season.
There are five matches left in 2023 for Union Berlin before the Bundesliga goes on its winter break. The first three matches will be fairly tough against Augsburg, Bayern Munich, and Borussia Monchengladbach.
The big matches that Union Berlin needs to win will be the last two before the break: December 16 at Bochum and December 20 against Koln. If Union loses those two, it will be a very long break until the season resumes on January 13.
As for the Champions League, Union has just one point after four matches, the draw against Napoli and three losses. All of the losses were pretty tough.
Union Berlin’s first Champions League match was at Real Madrid, no easy task. Union was holding on to a scoreless draw before Jude Bellingham scored in 94th minute.
The next match was a “home” match against Braga of Portugal that had to be played at the Olympiastadion because the team’s normal home field, the tiny (22,000 capacity, most of it standing) Stadion An der Alten Försterei, was not deemed suitable for Champions League play.
Union Berlin took a 2-0 lead after 37 minutes, but gave a goal back before halftime. Braga scored early in the second half and the game looked to be headed for a 2-2 draw. Then, in the 94th minute Andre Castro of Braga scored to give Braga all three points.
The third match was at home against Serie A champion Napoli, who was playing without its best play Victor Osimhen. The match was taut, but Napoli got a 65th minute goal to win it 1-0.
Union managed to get a 1-1 tie in its return match at Napoli. Union has two matches left, at Braga, and home to Real Madrid. They can’t advance to the knockout stage in the Champions League, but if they won the last two matches, they might get into third place, which would allow them to continue play in the less prestigious Europa League. (Think of it as Europe’s NIT.) But, Union Berlin is probably better off just fighting on one front to avoid relegation.
The nature of soccer is that there is just one more chance for Union to improve its squad and that won’t happen to January, which is one of two months when teams can add players on the transfer market. Union Berlin is not exactly flush with cash and may only be able to get players on loan. It would not be surprising if some players are sold off.
Will there be a happy ending again for Union Berlin? There might be. But this happy ending would be seeing a 15 by Union Berlin’s placement in the table. That would allow the team to regroup and fight again.
Is Union Berlin the real deal or are they just Wile E. Coyote finally looking down after he stepped off the cliff?