Iron in the Blood: on tour with Union Berlin, the Champions League's unlikeliest newcomers (2024)

As the sun breaks through the clouds above Kopenick in east Berlin, a queue of people winds its way around to the ticket office windows.

The two-storey outbuilding, in the shadows of the Stadion An Der Alten Forsterei, is daubed with graffiti. “Eisern (Iron) Union” screams the artwork on the side.

In truth, the building looks like it has seen better days. In reality, it has never known days this good.

They aren’t just any tickets that are being collected by the supporters; they are tickets to watch Union Berlin take on Real Madrid at the Bernabeu on Wednesday night in the Champions League.

For Union, who were playing regional football in the fourth tier less than 20 years ago and had never been in Germany’s top flight until 2019, it seems scarcely believable.

Being viewed as cool or rebellious is one thing — and Union, who are proudly a club from the East, have often been described as both. But competing in the Champions League is something else.

“Absurd” was the word that the local broadsheet Der Tagesspiegel used to describe Union’s progress in recent years.

“The story is often compared to Leicester,” Christopher Trimmel, Union’s captain and longest-serving player, tells The Athletic, smiling at his reference to the 5,000-1 Premier League title winners of 2016. “I still can’t really explain it. It’s madness.”

Trimmel was pictured on the club’s website last Thursday sitting on a throne, wearing a special edition black and gold Champions League jersey that had been released on sale earlier that morning.

Some of the fans picking up their pre-paid Real Madrid tickets had the new shirt draped over their shoulders.

Not for the first time this summer, Union had underestimated the demand.

“After two hours we had already sold as many shirts as we’d normally sell in a week,” says Christian Arbeit, who is the club’s head of communications as well as the stadium announcer and a die-hard fan since 1986.

Arbeit shakes his head and smiles. “It’s like ‘What’s going on?’.’’

Staff at Union ask that question a lot right now.

Arbeit recalls how they looked on with a sense of disbelief when 2,300 people turned up to watch a pre-season session where players were applauded for “running around in circles”.

Thirteen thousand came to see what was effectively a training game (three times 30 minutes) against a Bundesliga 2 team, while Union’s first Champions League home match, against the Portuguese side Braga at Hertha Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in a fortnight, is expected to be close to a 74,000 sell-out.

Rewind to the early 1990s, not long after the Berlin Wall came down, and Arbeit could have almost counted the spectators at Union.

“They were the very depressing years when the GDR (German Democratic Republic) broke down,” he says. “Many people faced existential problems. They had never had to handle joblessness or anything like that — that didn’t exist in the socialist countries.”

Arbeit sighs. “I attended competitive games with 700 people on the terraces.”

The club was living from hand to mouth at times and, at one stage, needle to arm. “Bleed for Union” was the name of the fund-raising campaign that saw fans give blood and donate the fee they receivedto help the club stave off the threat of bankruptcy. Four years later, more than 2,000 volunteers stepped forward to rebuild the stadium.

Nowadays, Bundesliga tickets at the Alte Forsterei are like gold dust, the club has more than 60,000 members (up from 11,000 a decade ago), Leonardo Bonucci is on the payroll, Real Madrid and Napoli are on the fixture list, and annual turnover could get close to €200million (£172.5m, $214m).

“Sometimes you think it’s too fast. But you can’t slow it down yourself,” Arbeit says. “You have to take it as it comes.”

So much has changed at Union but — and this is part of the magic of their story — so much remains the same. The president is still the lifelong fan who came to their rescue in 2004, a man still leans out of a window to manually change the number on the brick-hut scoreboard when a goal goes in, and fans can still watch the team for less than €20.

Quizzed about the price of home tickets for the Champions League games, Arbeit looks sheepish, almost as if he’s afraid to deliver the answer.

“If I say that to someone from England, he would go mad,” he replies.

“It was €75 for all three matches.”

It feels like too good an opportunity to miss for the club’s supporters as well as The Athletic, which is going to be following Union Berlin on their inaugural Champions League journey, talking to the staff and players who have made this fairytale possible, watching matches with the supporters, hearing from the unsung heroes, and contemplating whether to ask the captain, who is a tattoo artist in his spare time, for a permanent reminder of the experience.

The interview is scheduled for 12.30pm and Christopher Trimmel breaks with all footballer convention by walking through the door bang on time. Union’s right wing-back offers a warm handshake and starts as he means to go on.

“I’m a bit different to your normal professional footballer,” Trimmel says. “I like tattooing, I like art — my wife is an artist — I love to ride my Harley-Davidson, and I go to punk-rock concerts.”

Trimmel laughs when told that he has failed to tick any of the usual boxes. “‘Sleeping, eating, Playstation’,” he says, mimicking the standard response to a question about hobbies.

Jacob Sweetman, one of Union’s media staff, is translating and tells a story about seeing Trimmel casually walking across the car park in his leathers one morning with his motorbike helmet under his arm, just as Max Kruse pulled up in a green Lamborghini. Trimmel laughs at the juxtaposition.

Unlike some clubs, it has always been a case of each to their own at Union, where the journeyman striker Kevin Behrens went home on a push-bike after scoring a hat-trick of headers in a 4-1 victory against Mainz this season.

Trimmel smiles when it is pointed out that his own mode of transport would be frowned upon in England. “It’s the same here,” he says. “When there’s an accident, then it’s s***. The worst-case scenario if something really bad happens, then the club could actually cancel my contract. But I go very carefully.”

The last comment is made with a twinkle in his eye. We’ve only been talking for a few minutes but already it is easy to see why Trimmel, who turned 36 in February, is such a popular figure at Union.

Signed in 2014, when the club were in the second tier, the Austrian has developed a special relationship with the fanbase. Easy-going, understated and approachable, Trimmel has tattooed a number of Union supporters (as well as staff and players) and discussed the price of beer and bratwurst with others.

The latter comes up in conversation when Trimmel is asked about Union’s long-standing reputation as a club built on community spirit and whether he understood why some supporters were worried that everything would change in the Bundesliga.

‘Scheisse! We’re going up!’ is the title of Kit Holden’s excellent book on Union Berlin and taken from the words that were scrawled across a homemade banner that was raised behind the goal at the Alte Forsterei prior to winning promotion.

It was a joke, but there was a serious element to it too.

“Union weren’t supposed to be this successful,” Sweetman said in Holden’s book. “They shouldn’t be a Bundesliga club… I quite liked it when we were playing against Wolfsburg’s reserves.”

Trimmel nods respectfully as he listens to Sweetman translating his own comments.

“I have a very good connection with the fans, I speak regularly with them and I understand their worries,” he says. “I understood that they were worried about the price of beer going up, the price of sausages going up, the price of tickets going up, and that the club would go in the wrong direction. But development can be good, it can be positive, it’s about doing it step by step.

“We have the same DNA now as we had in the second division, even if we have world-class players nowadays.”

Union have the same unique stadium too — a bear pit on the edge of a forest, where fans stand shoulder to shoulder across three banks of terracing, abide by a strict set of rules (never boo the team, never scapegoat anyone in a Union shirt, never leave before the final whistle, and sing until you are hoarse), and create a din that inspires the home players as much as it intimates opponents.

“It’s one of a kind,” Trimmel says. “When I’m with the Austria national team, I talk to other players from the Bundesliga and they say they don’t want to play here because it’s too loud, because it’s unpleasant, because it creates its very own atmosphere.”

A Champions League game under the lights at the Alte Forsterei would be truly special, but Union — and the club agonised over this decision — opted to play their home matches at Hertha Berlin’s Olympic Stadium instead, where the capacity is more than three times higher, giving every supporter an opportunity to watch what could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“I swear, it was never about the money,” Arbeit says.

Either way, the downside is obvious.

“I’m being really honest now, I think playing in the Olympic Stadium is definitely a sporting disadvantage,” Trimmel says. “We simply feel more comfortable here and the atmosphere is different. I think we can beat any team in the world in our stadium.

“Also, in our stadium, it is a no-go to whistle, to leave the stadium earlier and to not support the team. But what happens when you’re in the Olympic Stadium and you’re 4-0 down in the first half to Real Madrid and you’ve got fans there who aren’t Unioners and who don’t know these rules? So there are those dangers. It’s a huge challenge for the fans to create this atmosphere in another stadium.

“But you have to respect the president’s decision, of course, to give more Unioners the chance to witness this special Champions League event live. And, as a team, we are known for overcoming obstacles. We’ve already played in the Europa Conference League at the Olympic Stadium (two seasons ago) and felt very comfortable too. But the big point is, it’s not the Alte Forsterei.”

Trimmel is not the sort to dwell on a negative. His glass is half-full and his demeanour quickly changes when asked about the Champions League experience that players such as the Germany international Robin Gosens, who featured in the final for Inter Milan last season, and Bonucci will bring to Union’s squad.

“We were only sitting in the dressing room last week, talking about the Bernabeu. Someone said to Bonucci, ‘Have you played there?’”

Trimmel laughs at the Italian’s response. “He said, ‘Yes, five times’.”

Bonucci, you sense, will enjoy life at Union, whose success on the pitch has been built on a defensive low block and rapid counter-attacks, allied to relentless running and a never-say-die spirit. Urs Fischer’s side will be a fascinating edition to the Champions League in that respect.

“We have basic things that we always stick to, that the trainer always wants to see, and that’s tactical discipline and being ‘eklig’ (horrible),” Trimmel says, smiling as Sweetman marvels at his use of the word.

“That is part of our DNA, annoying opponents, leaving few opportunities. This compact, defensive playing style, that is our style.”

It has worked spectacularly up until now and, in keeping with Germany’s ideal football model, enabled a member-owned club to compete at the highest level without selling its soul — something that Union’s supporters (and that includes the president Dirk Zingler) would never allow anyway.

Indeed, the club’s ultras have held up banners in the past protesting about the Bundesliga’s planned sale of TV rights to private equity firms. One read, “If being competitive means losing your values, we’d rather not be. Those who don’t get it, should go to Hertha.”

That was before Hertha, Union’s city rivals, were relegated from the Bundesliga last season after squandering a fortune.

“We took a different path, or a special path with Union Berlin, where big money was never an issue,” Trimmel says. “If you look across the city, hundreds of millions have been spent and it’s all gone wrong. Then you see this small club from Kopenick and what we’ve achieved. I think that’s just a wonderful story for football. And that’s why I love football — when small clubs mix it up with the big clubs.

“I follow football in England a bit and I love the Luton story. I’ve already seen many photos of their stadium and that, for me, is interesting.

“I don’t want to go to Wembley now. I’d rather go to Luton.”

Christian Arbeit’s phone keeps ringing.

Earlier in the day, he had a text message from an Olympic gold medallist.

“It said, ‘I need two VIP tickets for the Real Madrid game. Price doesn’t matter’. I was like,’ Yeah, but I guess they’re gone already’.”

Union’s story may have captured the imagination of people across Berlin and beyond, but not everyone in Germany is jumping up and down with excitement.

“When you qualify three times in a row for a European competition and you don’t really belong to the German football establishment who considers himself to be a natural participant of the European competitions, then they start to behave in a bit different way,” Arbeit says.

“When we got promoted, everyone was like, ‘Ah, that’s cool. They really deserve to be in the Bundesliga for one year. They are crazy guys, they got a cool stadium, they always sing, that’s pretty good. So enjoy your 15 minutes of fame’.”

Arbeit smiles. “And now we steal their (European) money — they think they deserve it. (Borussia) Monchengladbach, Wolfsburg. Hoffenheim — and much bigger or richer teams who did not qualify for Europe over the last three years when we did, they don’t find that very funny because they have to explain to their financial guys: ‘Why do we spend so much more money and are less successful than a bunch of crazy freaks from Berlin?’.”

It is a good question. From Union’s perspective, their shrewd player recruitment under the sporting director Oliver Ruhnert has clearly evolved from the days when Arbeit, in his role as press officer, was one of five people asked to vote on whether a player should be signed or not.

Yet in other ways — in superficial ways in particular — Union refuses to move with the times, as Arbeit explains when addressing a question about whether he takes additional satisfaction from the fact that their success has come organically and without a wealthy benefactor.

“I have to be honest — sometimes that gives a little extra joy,” he says. “But most of the time, not. Because most of the time we’re not thinking about what others do. We do what we do, and from time to time something happens and someone comes up and asks, ‘So why don’t you have goal music?’

“We say, ‘We don’t need any’.”

“Yeah, but everyone else has it.”

“OK. But we did not take a look at others and decide not to have (goal music) because all others have it. We never thought to have (goal music) because we never thought that someone in a stadium had a problem with celebrating a goal. Everyone can do this in a very natural way. You can just freak out the way you want. You don’t need a rhythm to clap with.

“But if you give them one, then everyone will do it,” Arbeit says, clapping his hands to demonstrate. “But we don’t want that. It’s like, leave the very moment of a goal to the people to enjoy themselves.

“We don’t think that this is so special. But everyone else takes a look and, ‘It’s them again. They are the only ones in the first and second division who don’t have that’.”

That said, there is one soundtrack that Union are really looking forward to hearing at games this season: the Champions League anthem. Behrens, who was playing in the fourth tier earlier in his career, blasted that music out from the dressing room after Union were on the verge of sealing Champions League qualification last season.

At the Bernabeu on Wednesday, Union’s staff, players and supporters will experience the real thing.

“The biggest club competition in world football and the very first match is against the biggest team in the world,” Arbeit says, smiling.

He pauses for a moment as he looks out of the window at the empty terraces at the Alte Forsterei, where he has witnessed so much history and so much change since his father first took him along as a 12-year-old in 1986.

“I spent a beautiful year in London from summer 1992 to summer 1993,” Arbeit adds. “And I was living on a road which leads to Stamford Bridge. So I went to Chelsea because that was a 10-minute walk. I told David Fofana (who is on loan from Chelsea) about that a few days ago.

“I said, ‘Listen, if you go back to Chelsea next summer, you need to get tickets for me because I’ll come and visit you’.”

Arbeit shakes his head and smiles.

“To even think that someone from Chelsea joins us, and we play in the Champions League and they don’t… I mean, what is that?”

The next instalment of The Athletic’s series covering Union Berlin’s Champions League campaign will follow their opening game away to Real Madrid on Wednesday