When the game was over and the relegation was certain, an eerie silence fell over the almost empty Weser Stadium.
It was also such a quiet farewell for SV Werder (SVW) because their last Bundesliga game had long been decided.
In the 2: 4 against Borussia Mönchengladbach, the SVW did not have the slightest chance.
And who really wanted to hope for FC Schalke 04?
With the news of the victory of 1. FC Köln over the Gelsenkircheners, who had already been relegated, the last belief in a miracle from the Weser also disappeared - to which the current Bremen vintage had contributed nothing anyway.
No whistles, no music, silence where otherwise after the final whistle “Werder Bremen, lifelong green and white” trickles out of the loudspeakers.
Not even the 100 admitted spectators could be heard, employees of the office.
Werder's first descent since 1980 did not initially result in a big bang.
It was just the ending in minor, the last chord of the decline in installments that has dragged on since 2010.
"We are all sad"
With his gray five-day beard and the pained expression on his face, interim trainer Thomas Schaaf tried to come up with an initial conclusion that sounded as honest as it was sad and did not even try to announce a resurgence or a possible renaissance: “I'm so sorry, but it was is unfortunately like that. We're all sad. ”Schaaf said it wasn't anyone else's fault after the team that he took over from Florian Kohfeldt a week ago had only scored one point in the past ten games:“ We just need to attach that to ourselves. ”
While the players were smuggled past the fans waiting in front of the stadium in minibuses, shouts of “Board out!” Could be heard.
They were directed primarily against sports director Frank Baumann.
Will the supervisory board continue with the increasingly hapless sports director?
“I have been with Werder with full commitment and all my heart for 22 years.
The pain is difficult to put into words.
I have my share, but I don't run away from responsibility, ”said Baumann on ZDF.
How could that happen?
After 57 Bundesliga seasons, the proud club from the Weser has given up its sails.
The table third in the eternal Bundesliga table has tripped himself up through a series of wrong personal decisions.
The last of these was having held onto Kohfeldt for too long.
There are 31 points this season, like a year ago when Werder stayed in the Bundesliga after a tough fight against Heidenheim. If you look at the yield since the 2010/2011 season, the Bremen team has always remained well below the 50-point mark and had their best results in eighth place in 2017 and 2019: mediocre with a view to the relegation zone.
As a permanent participant in the Champions League, the SVW had gone into the decade of this millennium. But it is precisely this transition that marks the turning point in the club's recent history: Werder's management has not succeeded in turning a Champions League squad into a "normal" Bundesliga team against the backdrop of a falling budget. First, in the constellation with coach Schaaf and manager Klaus Allofs until 2012, they tried to repeat the usual achievement of a European cup place.
The money played a subordinate role.
When Allofs went to Wolfsburg, the austerity course began, at the provisional end of which the club is now and can only prevent bankruptcy if players are sold.
Club boss Klaus Filbry has received a loan for Werder and issued a bond.
The debts and shortfalls in income are staggering for Bremen standards.
After all, Filbry is open about the financial hardship.
The squad bled out year after year, the budget was sewn to the edge: This is also what this tour with Filbry, Baumann and Hubertus Hess-Grunewald stands for.
Even the popular supervisory board chairman Marco Bode now illustrates the descent of an association whose managers get along well, are even friends, but who have been too hesitant, even sleepy, in their will to be steadfast for years.
The fact that Baumann did not bring anything good from the transfer market, even pointing out in a video conference a week ago that Werder could not afford players in the past two transfer periods, seemed like a declaration of bankruptcy.
Do clubs like Mainz, Union Berlin or Freiburg find their professionals in a different market than the one Baumann is looking for?
For years he has not been able to present a suitable "six", namely since Thomas Delaney was sold.
And when Davy Klaassen could not be kept in this position before this season, Erras, Möhwald and Groß should somehow share the task - that didn't seem very planned, and you thought you could hear Baumann say to Kohfeldt: “Flo, you are doing Yes. ”The young Agu, Mbom, Chong, Woltemade and Schmid were also of no help.
And yet the fans drew hope when Werder won in Bielefeld at the beginning of March and brought eleven points between themselves and the relegation zone. With cautiously pragmatic football, Kohfeldt's team had achieved a lot. However, nothing remained of Werder's DNA, dynamic attacking football. Kohfeldt's system did not allow a return to more goal danger. When the defensive stability did not materialize, Werder crashed. How the Gladbach goals fell on Saturday symbolized a lack of defensibility.
Now the next traditional club has crashed. Werder against HSV, Schalke against Nuremberg, maybe Cologne against Düsseldorf: What a second league. The anticipation in Bremen is limited, because who will soon play in green and white, who will lead the team, who will lead the SVW - that is completely unclear on this Whitsun weekend.