by Arneb » Tue Mar 04, 2025 12:51 pm
In-depth article about Auld Auntie's misery in Germany's somewhat more intelligent football magazine, 11Freunde. The TLDR is, the club has the second most expensive bunch of players in the league (let's not call them a team), we wrote a negative balance of 22 million last year, on top of 60 million of debt left over from the Big City Big Club Big Big years. We are four points above the relegation playoff spot, and the players are acting like, aw shucks, will be a bit difficult getting promoted to the Bundesliga this year, as really we should be. No worries, let's just have a chill time and trundle down the last 12 games, and then it's off to a nice three weeks off on some expensive island. We can always play for promotion next season. We'll just travel to those godforsaken provincial shitholes, pick up the points, and fly back home where it's more comfy. Where is this Elversberg again? Never mind, we'll make two in the first half and call it a ... oops.
With that kind of 'tude, we know how it'll end. And this time getting relegated to League Three will probably be the end of the club. League Three is still a professional league, but it is borderline financially untenable even for well-run clubs, let alone one with red ink worth 80 million and monstrous running expenses. If that happens, there will only be Union, and sympathetic as I am towards them, this is not the kind of club to assume the role of challenger to the big guns, bringing back top-level football to a region with 4 million potential fans. It's actually quite scary.
Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem