Blood, sweat and cheers: how Union Berlin rose from ruin to Europe’s elite
“One story sums up Union,” says Mark Jameson, an Englishman living in Berlin who has followed Union for more than 20 years. “One of the ultras at our rivals, Hertha, was ill. He had leukemia. There was a campaign at Hertha to find the right blood match for him. But Union also did this, and the club set up a blood station at a home game. More than 500 of our fans queued up that day to donate blood to this guy.”
It is a little anecdote that illustrates Union’s ethos and the importance of community, even with rivals. Winning is not the most important measure of success in this pocket of east Berlin, although there has been rather a lot of that recently.
In recent years Union have been transformed, rising from near bankruptcy and the lower leagues to the Bundesliga and now to the Champions League. The game against Braga on Tuesday marks the club’s first home match in the competition.
But just as the players, victories and defeats come and go, this is a club defined by their fans, or members, who control a majority stake under Germany’s famous 50+1 rule. It is truly run by the fans, for the fans. There is a common saying among the supporters: ‘We don’t go to the football. We go to Union’.
The supporters are the lifeblood of the club, literally. In 2004, Union could not afford to pay for the license for fourth-division football and so a campaign, ‘Bleed for Union’, was started, donating blood to Berlin hospitals and giving the money they received back to the club. Union survived.
Union is also a club built by their fans, literally. In 2008, their Stadion An der Alten Försterei, nestled in the forest of Köpenick in the east of the city, was in dire need of renovation. But with no euros in the bank, they were stuck. So the fans got to work themselves, digging trenches and pouring concrete, despite only a handful of those present knowing anything about construction.
“I was asked what I can do,” Jameson says. “I said: ‘Not very much, donkey work,’ and was assigned to scrape the old concrete off the old terrace steps, down to the metal frame. I did that for a few days. We were covered in dust and grime. I’ve still got the hard hat upstairs. The camaraderie was immense.”
In total, around 2,500 fans put in more than 140,000 hours of work to rebuild the stadium from a rubbled mess to what is now a wonderfully claustrophobic 22,000-capacity ground that suffocates opponents and amplifies the passion of the fervent home supporters. Terraced on three sides, with less than 4,000 seats, it is a swirling cauldron of red and white.
If the Alten Försterei is a symbol of Union’s rise, it is a little surprising that the club will play their home Champions League matches at the Olympiastadion, the largest stadium in Germany where local rivals Hertha play, with Union insisting it is to allow as many of the 50,000-plus members the chance to see their team on the biggest stage.
Hertha have made their feelings clear about Union’s temporary move to the west of the city, unfurling a banner in their second division game on Saturday which read: “Only you don’t play at home: do you even recognise your own face in the mirror?”
“We should have played the Champions League at the Alten Försterei but I have made friends with the Olympiastadion idea as long as we don’t expect the same experience,” says Bas Timmers, who is part of the Union podcast Mattuschka’s Right Peg, alongside Jameson. “It will be more massive, louder, but we will be further away from the pitch. It’s not necessarily going to be worse, but different.”
The 74,475-capacity Olympiastadion is sold out for the Braga game, with many tickets limited to €25 for each of the three home Champions League matches, and 1,000 free tickets distributed to fans who would otherwise not be able to attend. It’s going to be quite the event.
“It’s a full house on Tuesday, it’s a public holiday [German Unity Day],” says Mark Wilson, another member of the podcast. “The place will be absolutely bouncing. Fans are going to a youth game at the Alten Försterei in the afternoon and then will make their way to the Olympiastadion. I just hope they pace themselves.”
On the pitch, by their now lofty standards, Union are in something of a slump, losing the last five matches, including a narrow 1-0 defeat at Real Madrid, where Jude Bellingham broke Germanhearts with a last-minute goal. A combination of bedding in new recruits (among them Leonardo Bonucci, Chelsea loanee David Fofana, Leeds loanee Brenden Aaronson and Germany internationals Robin Gosens and Kevin Volland), some bad luck and injuries to key players – namely to Rani Khedira, brother of Sami – have contributed to the poor start to the season.
There is, however, still unwavering support for the manager, Urs Fischer, who joined the club in 2018. “Urs is one of the best managers in Europe,” says Kyle Walsh, who is travelling from Scotland to Berlin for Tuesday’s game. “To take us from the second division to the Bundesliga, then survive relegation – a miracle – then qualify for the Conference League, then the Europa League, now the Champions League. He must have had approaches from elsewhere. If Urs wants to stay here for the rest of his life, that’s fine by me. He can do what he wants.”
“Kicker are calling it a ‘tief’, loosely translated as a ‘low’, but they daren’t call it a crisis,” says Timmers. Jameson chimes in: “This is not a crisis. I would never have thought about the Champions League when I first came to a crumbling terrace with just 2,000 other people. I still have to pinch myself.”