The supporters of Union Berlin enjoyed the best summer of their lives as they celebrated their team winning their second Bundesliga title and their first DFB-Pokal. Indeed, they were so elated that they instilled manager Ruprecht Prusseit as a bonafide Union legend.
The summer of 2039 saw two of the manager’s rivals depart as Bayern sacked Marcelo Gallardo for finishing 2nd and losing the DFB-Pokal Final and Dortmund sacked Mauricio Pochettino for a poor 9th-place finish. Bayern oddly hired Vincenzo Italiano from Frankfurt and Dortmund poached Mikel Arteta off Napoli, who replaced him with Prusseit’s under 19s boss Brandon Petersen.
Back at Union, they bid a fond farewell to 30-year-old Grga Picak, who departed after 257 league games for the club and joined Barcelona on a free transfer. They also saw plenty of interest in their star players, including Newcastle offering £169m for winger Bruno Rodríguez then a ridiculous £79m for Europe’s most prolific striker Claudio Sepúlveda and Man UFC offering just £30m for goalkeeper Lee Kwang-Sun.
However, there was no pressure to sell considering the club came into the new season with an outrageous bank balance of £413m and a massive transfer budget of £156m. So Prusseit made Rodríguez the highest-paid player in history on £200k per week until 2044.
One player who did move on was midfielder Adolfo Ferreira, who’d done next to nothing in three seasons so Prusseit was more than happy to take Arsenal’s £33.5m. That left the squad looking pretty light and Prusseit was struggling to find decent replacements. But they did eventually make a few moves, bringing in five new players on deadline day. The pick of them was winger Anton Stahre, who joined for £8.5m from Anderlecht, along with fellow winger Bernardo Simoes for £3m from Marítimo and Turkish midfielder Hüsamettin Ayan. But they weren’t exactly seismic signings.
With the squad bolstered, Prusseit continued with the 4-2-3-1 formation that worked successfully last season. Striker José Marco is retraining as a midfielder but that’s the only change on the starting 11 of last season.
Union’s 2nd Title Defence
Union were now fancied as 2nd favourites for Bundesliga behind Bayern, who beat them 2-1 in the Supercup. Bayern are huge favourites at 5/4, Union and Leipzig are 6/1 and Dortmund are 10/1. But Rodríguez and new club captain Leandro Van Dessel are considered the best and third-best players in the league.
Union’s title defence began at home to Dortmund and a Sepúlveda brace led Prusseit to a 2-0 win over new boy Arteta. First half Van Dessel and Sepúlveda strikes earned a 2-0 win at Arminia Bielefeld despite Rodríguez getting himself sent off after the break. And the Chilean striker’s goal saw him become the record league goalscorer in Union history, surpassing Jordan Siebatcheu’s 98 in just 116 games.
The striker continued his flying start to the campaign with a hat trick inspiring a 3-0 win at home to Leipzig. He also made two in a 3-0 win over Hamburg, which was two more than he managed in the entirety of last season! A winning start ended with a 0-0 at Leverkusen but, after three games without scoring, Sepúlveda put that right with a hat-trick in a 5-0 hammering of Wolfsburg.
That formed part of a very solid start to the campaign, even despite Miroslav Milosevic missing two months with broken ribs suffered on international duty. That forced Sepúlveda out to the right wing with Fredrik Fossdal taking his place up top, and the Norwegian took his chance by scoring back-to-back braces in dominant wins over Nürnberg and Hoffenheim.
Sepúlveda returned up top for a Berliner Derby at home to Hertha and scored twice in a 5-1 hammering. Then a rotated side won 3-0 at home to 6th-place Freiburg led by a Fossdal hat trick. But the unbeaten start ended after 13 games with a slightly unlucky 2-1 loss to Bayern, who did nothing except being gifted two goals just before half-time by Lee.
Union responded in style, putting five past Werder Bremen with a Sepúlveda brace and goals by Marco, Van Dessel and centre-back Abdelkarim Belkacem. They somehow only won 1-0 despite having 23 shots to two at nine-man Gladbach and finished the decade with a dominant 3-0 win over Stuttgart with Sepúlveda, Van Dessel and Marco all scoring again. Later that day, Bayern lost 2-0 at Leverkusen.
That left Union eight points clear of Bayern, having lost once, scored 46 and conceded just seven in 17 matches. Sepúlveda leads the way with 17 goals and the best average rating of 7.79, while Lee has 13 clean sheets!
More Tough Champions League Fixtures
This season’s Champions League fixtures looked even tougher than last season with trips to Juventus and Chelsea and hosting Man UFC, Real Madrid and Napoli.
They were a little unlucky to lose 2-1 at Juve but Van Dessel did score their only shot on target. They got dominated by UFC but defended superbly and nicked two goals on the counter through Van Dessel and Sepúlveda. A 2-0 win followed in Poland before a 0-0 at Shakhtar and a 4-2 defeat at home to Madrid. But they earned a strong 0-0 at Chelsea to sit 15th with two games remaining.
Could Union’s mean defence continue to perform and lead them to a 3rd straight title? And could they progress with 2 home games to come in the Champions League? Join us on Monday to find out!
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