President Dirk Zingler crept through the inside of the Allianz Arena towards the exit with his head bowed. Michael Parensen, who is increasingly taking on the role of manager Oliver Ruhnert, who is again absent at 1. FC Union Berlin, also did not want to speak after the 1-0 defeat at FC Bayern on Wednesday evening. But that had nothing to do with the bankruptcy of the record champions; after all, you can lose in Munich.
The speechlessness was primarily due to the freak out of coach Nenad Bjelica, who put his hand in Leroy Sané’s face twice and was quite rightly shown the red card. “What I did cannot be tolerated. “I only have to apologize to my team, not to Sané,” he said afterwards. Urs Fischer’s successor, who has been in office for just two months, has simultaneously left an entire club speechless and in dire need of explanation with his rowdy actions.
How often is fair play talked about in football? How often is it preached that the players in professional football are role models for countless children and young people? How much would the Köpenickers have to demonstrate to the outside world, especially in the current precarious sporting situation, that they are a unit that is not deterred by any secondary theater of war?
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With his careless behavior, Nenad Bjelica has ensured that the next few weeks in the southeast of the capital will be even more restless than they would have already been after the next sporting disappointment. The tight results in the new year on paper (0-0 in Freiburg, 0-1 at FC Bayern) distract the focus somewhat from the fact that Union currently has no ideas in the offensive game. Bjelica, who created a spirit of optimism with the victories against Gladbach (3:1) and Cologne (2:0) at the end of last year, does not provide any sporting arguments for a long-term cooperation. And now another solid reason to fire him straight away.
“It’s hard to defend him there. I don’t want to add any more fuel to the fire either. But: Not good,” said Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel about Bjelica’s behavior. Union defender Kevin Vogt didn’t seem to want to step into the breach for his coach: “I don’t want to sugarcoat anything, but it was well provoked. But it doesn’t excuse anything.”
The Köpenick full-back Robin Gosen even criticized Bjelica’s handiness towards Sané in an unusually direct way: “It is clear that it is not beneficial. We’re already in a phase where we need all the support we can get, where we need our coaches on the sidelines to motivate us, coach us and be there.” The national player added: “If he gets sent off with a red card, that’s it “That’s not a good signal to the team and it’s even more unsettling.”
Depending on how severe the sports court’s punishment will be and how many of his team’s games the Croatian will have to watch from the stands, Dirk Zingler will have to decide how sensible the path they have taken together still makes. He can hardly dismiss Bjelica in a few weeks if the results and, above all, the performances continue to be poor and the coach can only have a limited influence from the stands anyway.
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Steffen Baumgart would like to take over a new club
Bjelica’s predecessor Urs Fischer has already seen the red card in the current season. After the cup exit in Stuttgart (0-1) at the end of October, he used a bad tone towards the referee team. Not that this is an excuse, but Fischer’s nerves were completely frayed after the eleventh competitive defeat in a row. All the helplessness and frustration were reflected in the action, for which he subsequently apologized remorsefully. But why Bjelica lost her nerve so much and how that would happen in an even more stressful situation remains his secret for now.
It seems to fit the picture that Steffen Baumgart, who was fired from 1. FC Köln at the end of December, has already publicly stated that he wants to take over a new club again in the near future. “I think at the end of January I could imagine being ready for something new again,” he made no secret of not wanting to wait forever for a new offer immediately after leaving the Rhineland.
Steffen Baumgart is a club legend at 1. FC Union Berlin, popular and respected among fans, and has done a good job for years in Cologne and previously in Paderborn. And: He could be on the sidelines straight away.
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