At the end of an agonising Saturday afternoon the shock and horror was real, after defeat at home to Borussia Mönchengladbach condemned Werder to a second-ever relegation, and their first for 41 years. It was real from former stars like Johan Micoud, the playmaking prince from the 2004 Bundesliga/DfB Pokal double winners (“I want to cry,” he tweeted), Mesut Özil and Davy Klaassen, who was still a Werder player in autumn and escaped to a double-winning season back home at Ajax. It was certainly real outside the Weserstadion, where the outpouring of grief after the match turned to anger in some quarters, prompting the police to advance a water cannon, deploy pepper spray and the players to sneak out of a back entrance to avoid a confrontation.
Blame can’t be attached to Schaaf, the club’s technical director who replaced Florian Kohfeldt for this game as a final throw of the dice. He is part of Werder and the club part of him, serving continuously for four decades as academy scholar, player and coach between 1972 and 2013. That attachment was as apparent as ever in both the emotion steeping through his customary stoicism after the final whistle (“I find it difficult to speak right now,” he said) and in that he had taken on this rescue mission in the first place.
“Schaaf hadn’t been able to say no when Werder had asked him,” wrote Weser Kurier’s Carsten Sander. “[He] agreed because he didn’t want to be accused of running away from responsibility.” Schaaf knows Werder like the back of his hand and knew he had to work on the fundamentals of his squad’s shattered confidence. He even called Kohfeldt to get some insight into the players’ difficulties.
It wasn’t enough. The game was two minutes and 40 seconds old when Gladbach’s captain, Lars Stindl, steered in Stefan Lainer’s cutback from the right, and the sinking feeling set in for Bremen. Gladbach pulled away at the beginning of the second half and it was 4-0 and over before Milot Rashica and Niclas Füllkrug belatedly troubled the scorers.
Still, even amid the one-way traffic, Bremen were stumbling towards a repeat of last year’s relegation play-off and a potential reprieve. That all changed with four minutes to go, when Sebastiaan Bornauw’s emphatic header for Köln lifted them above Bremen, prompting ashen faces among substitutes and staff in the stand. This time, there was no escape. Lessons were not learned after last season – although the club has been circling the plughole for a while, with not a single top-seven finish since the last qualification for the Champions League in 2010 – and one point taken in the last 10 games of this season tells its own story. “You have to be honest,” lamented the captain, Niklas Moisander. “It’s difficult to say we deserved to stay up.”
The increasing sentiment is that at all comes back to another man steeped in Bremen history, the sporting director, Frank Baumann, a mainstay of Schaaf’s double winners and other famous triumphs. “I’m not someone who runs away from difficult situations,” Baumann said after the game when asked about his future. Yet he was not ready for the last difficult situation, when he chose not to fire Kohfeldt a month ago after a seventh straight Bundesliga defeat at Union Berlin, losing vital time to regroup. Baumann and the supervisory board chairman Marco Bode, another club legend, are under huge pressure from supporters.
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Next season’s renewal of the Nordderby with Hamburg should make Werder look closely in the mirror. Their rivals are facing a fourth consecutive season in the second tier after unsuccessfully attempting a series of short-term fixes, and Bremen need culture change. Debts of €75 million demand it, and with Rashica, Ludwig Augustinsson and others needing to be sold, one wonders how competitive a team they can construct. Veterans Moisander and Theodor Gebre Selassie (the latter has been at Werder for nine years and was in tears at full time) are out of contract and will leave. Perhaps the only silver lining is that the misfiring Davie Selke will also leave at the end of his 18-month loan spell. He would have had to been signed permanently had Werder stayed up at a €12 million cost they can scarcely afford.
Given that the last three coaches have come from within the inner circle (Viktor Skripnik, another of the 2004 side, Alexander Nouri and Kohfeldt), it seems logical that outside influence is required. Who will be brave enough to take it on is another question. What is certain is that clinging to the past will no longer do for Werder Bremen.
Bundesliga results
ShowBayern 5-2 Augsburg, Dortmund 3-1 Leverkusen, Hoffenheim 2-1 Hertha Berlin, Wolfsburg 2-3 Mainz, Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 Freiburg, Union Berlin 2-1 RB Leipzig, Köln 1-0 Schalke, Werder Bremen 2-4 Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart 0-2 Arminia Bielefeld
Talking points
Köln, then, take on Holstein Kiel in the relegation play-off on Wednesday and Saturday. The exhausted northerners, who have been dealing with a hectic programme to make up games since their Covid shutdown, faltered at the final hurdle in their last game against Darmstadt and were leapfrogged by Greuther Fürth, who are automatically promoted with Bundesliga 2 champions Bochum.
He got there but boy, did he leave it late. Robert Lewandowski’s record-breaking 41st goal of the Bundesliga season, eclipsing Gerd Müller’s 49-year-old record, arrived with the last kick of Bayern Munich’s campaign, the icing on a 5-2 triumph over Augsburg that looked as if it was never going to be piped onto the top of the title cake. On a day that saw fond farewells to David Alaba and Hansi Flick, Lewandowski was pinching himself at his incredible tally, achieved in just 29 games. “I didn’t dare to even dream that you could score this many in a season,” he said.
He’s done it!! 41 GOALS! 🤩
Robert Lewandowski breaks Gerd Müller’s all-time Bundesliga goal tally for a single season! ⚽
Record-breaker. History maker. Legend. 🤜🤛 pic.twitter.com/61YqpTbJoP
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) May 22, 2021
For Borussia Dortmund, who secured third place with a 3-1 win over Leverkusen with Erling Haaland scoring twice, it was a day of goodbyes. They bade farewell to the retiring Lukasz Piszczek with a series of large banners in the Südtribune (and later by ordering Five Guys for the whole squad at their Brackel training centre), while Lars Bender scored from the penalty spot for the visitors with his last touch in the professional game having replaced twin Sven, who is also hanging up his boots. There was even a presentation for popular referee Manuel Gräfe, who celebrated his final Bundesliga game by receiving flowers and a congratulatory collage of him showing various BVB players cards down the years.
Yesterday was the final match of Lars Bender's career 🙏
Off the bench for one final appearance, Leverkusen won a late penalty.
When Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Burki saw it was Bender taking it, he didn't try to save it. pic.twitter.com/ZabixDkieV
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) May 23, 2021
If the Champions League and Europa League places were decided, Germany’s inaugural participants in the Conference League weren’t nailed on – and it went to a club to whom it genuinely means something, Union. The Berliners snatched the place from Gladbach right at the end of their game against Leipzig with Max Kruse (who had expressed an initial scepticism about the new competition some weeks ago) heading home in injury time to spark wild celebrations of a first-ever European qualification among the players and the 2,000 fans who were allowed in, and more gathered outside.
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