Union Berlin enjoyed a strong second season in Bundesliga as Ruprecht Prusseit’s young squad secured a 7th-place finish. At first, Union were told they’d missed out on European football due to Leverkusen winning the cup but, for some reason, Freiburg were bumped up to the Europa League and Union took their place in the Europa Conference League.
The summer of 2034 began with a mini-saga as Bayern responded to not winning Bundesliga for the first time in 22 years by sacking Julian Nagelsmann after 12 successive league titles and three Champions League wins. The Bayern fans immediately instilled Prusseit as their favourite for the vacant job, but obviously Prusseit wasn’t interested.
Staying in Berlin, Union had £123m in the bank and a transfer budget of £54m. That was boosted as two key players of the Union rise departed, with Matej Lnenicka joining Rennes for £3.3m and Antonio Villalonga going to Benfica for £9.25m.
Prusseit began investing that cash by continuing his focus on affordable young talent. First through the door were Israeli midfielder Ariel Atrash for £1.2m from Hapoel Tel Aviv, centre-back Sahin Guvenc for £2.5m from Besiktas and midfielder Kevin Starke for £5.25m from Leverkusen.
Prusseit then broke the Union transfer record to sign holding midfielder Abdelkarim Belkacem for £8.5m from Feyenoord before centre-back Manfred Ammermann signed for £4m from Leipzig and winger Gonzalo Abreu joined for £2.5m from Peñarol. But the signing of the summer could be 18-year-old striker Leandro for £4.6m from Palmeiras who, Prusseit thought quietly to himself, could be the new Endrick.
Despite those eight incomings, Hertha still ended the transfer window with £92m in the bank. And, with his transfer business done, Prusseit stuck with the 4-3-3 that worked well last season. Satoru Iida drops back into defence, Gerhard Seibert steps up as the playmaker and Belkacem and Abreu come in as starters.
Prusseit’s First European Football
Prusseit’s first taste of European football saw Union enter the third qualifying round of the Europa Conference League, which gave him his first taste of the snazzy new draws…
First up was Willem II and a brace from last season’s top scorer Michael Storskov earned a 2-1 victory in Holland before a 0-0 at home sent them through. They took on Maccabi Tel Aviv in the next round and another Storskov double earned a 2-0 win in Israel before a comfortable 3-0 home victory, which oddly saw a new club attendance low of just 14,000. And that eased them through to the Europa Conference League league phase.
Third Bundesliga Campaign Begins
The media still didn’t fancy Union’s chances, predicting them to finish 14th with odds of 250/1 to win the league. Bayern remain heavy favourites at 11/10 followed by Leipzig (6/1), champions Dortmund (15/2) and Leverkusen (14/1).
Season three in the top tier began with a tough game at home to Leverkusen. Prusseit’s defence held firm in a tight game while midfielder Grga Picak nicked the only goal just before the hour mark. But the new-found rigours of midweek and weekend games saw a knackered side lose 2-0 at Hamburg before a rotated side lost 3-1 at Nürnberg. They got back on track with a thriller at home to Stuttgart, in which Picak, Steibert, Storskov and Guvenc’s first goals for the club earned a 4-2 victory. But a 2-0 loss followed at Dortmund, who had a front three of Reyna, Adeyemi and Bardghji…
That saw an interesting trend developing as Union won all their home games and lost all their away games. That continued as a Seibert brace and Atrash’s first goal for the club led a 3-1 win over Gladbach then they got absolutely battered by 34 shots to three at Bayern but only lost 2-1, with Leandro getting his first Union goal.
Seibert and Storskov earned a 2-1 win at home to Fortuna Düsseldorf before – guess what? – a 2-1 loss at city rivals Hertha and a 3-1 win at home to St. Pauli thanks to a Picak strike and Storskov double. So after 10 games, Union had won five out of five at home and lost five out of five away!
Union Get An Away Point (But Just The One!)
The bizarre trend of losing every away game was snapped by Seibert’s penalty earning a heavily rotated team a draw at Köln, before getting back to business as usual by losing 3-2 at Freiburg. But the perfect home form continued as back-to-back Storskov braces earned a 2-1 win over 3rd-place Wolfsburg and 2-0 win over struggling Frankfurt.
The European schedule saw Union oddly miss a load of league fixtures. So they headed into a month-long winter break sitting 11th in Bundesliga but just three points behind 6th place Stuttgart with three games in hand. As the table below shows, Union have won all seven games but lost six of their seven away games!
Europa Conference League League Phase
Strangely, there was no fancy ceremony for the Europa Conference League league phase, but Union got a pretty easy-looking draw.
Union began at home to Cluj, absolutely dominated the early stages and scored early through Storskov. But they somehow only won 1-0 after racking up 20 shots to zero! A similar story followed at Inter Turku as Union dominated but struggled to finish their chances until Storskov came off the bench to bail them out with an 87th-minute winner.
Union stepped things up a notch with a 4-0 thumping of BATE Borisov. And the 100% record continued with back-to-back trips to Austria, winning 2-0 at Rheindorf Altach and 2-1 at Sturm Graz, which saw them qualify automatically with a game remaining. 2034 concluded by entertaining Motherwell and hammering them 4-0 with first-half goals by winger Jakub Silny, Picak, Storskov and centre-back Mikulas Mraz.
That saw Union finish 3rd as one of four teams with a 100% record. And Prusseit couldn’t help but feel this whole league phase concept seemed a really ridiculous idea. Nevertheless, Storskov is the competition’s top scorer with 10 goals,
Storskov has been exceptional so far this season, scoring 22 goals in 25 games with a 7.53 average rating, and winger Silny has been a surprise key performer with a club-high seven assists and a 7.22 average rating.
How far could Union progress in the ECL? And could they finally win a league game away from home? Join us on Monday to find out!
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