Size is fleeting, football remains dynamic.
And that's why it is wrong to see something like a disguised first Bundesliga in the second Bundesliga.
No matter how attractive this 1b class of German professional football with eleven former championship clubs from the Federal Republic of Germany and the faded GDR may seem at first glance, all teams with higher ambitions in this league want to escape to the top as quickly as possible.
First and foremost the seven-time champion FC Schalke 04, who was relegated at the end of May, who has also played in the Champions League for years, and his sad companion, the four-time champion SV Werder Bremen, who has to fight back in second class after the first industrial accident in 1980.
After years of success, Schalke had recently weakened their economic and sporting basis to such an extent that more than 200 million euros in liabilities were accumulated and the unstoppable sporting decline was documented with 18th place.
Also Werder, which for decades looked like a lovable family club, had drawn the wrong lessons from the stroke of luck of having just survived relegation 2020 in a duel with second division third 1. FC Heidenheim.
Bremen muddled on, already felt safe in the spring and was ripe for the second division with the first fall to relegation rank 17 on matchday 34.
New game New luck?
New game New luck? Even if Bremen and Schalke are the first contenders for the prompt re-promotion for many, a look at the former Bundesliga dinosaur Hamburger SV helps to exercise caution. HSV, six times German champions, have been working in vain on the first-class comeback since their first Bundesliga relegation in 2018. The former North German flagship club opens the new second division season this Friday (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the 2nd Bundesliga, on Sat1 and Sky) in front of almost 20,000 spectators as a guest of FC Schalke with a new coach, Tim Walter, and the evergreen hope, this time to make the big leap.
The HSV meets a team that has spent the past few days together in a quarantine area after goalkeeper Ralf Fährmann tested positive for Corona at the beginning of the week.
One day later, in the home game against Hannover 96, Bremen are challenged to pass their first assessment at home.
And that with a team that should not be identical to the one that may only have to find and play in after the end of the transfer period on August 31.
Everything at the beginning in Bremen?
The green-whites and their new coach - nomen est omen? - Markus Anfang are looking forward to the start after a good preparation phase. Even if the coach, who was already fairly successful in Kiel, Cologne and Darmstadt, in the medium term attaches more importance to the development process of the Bremer than to short-term encouraging results ("we mustn't put the recovery above the reconstruction here"), a victorious start of the season can be but inspire the mood on the Weser.
Werder is currently still relying on many regulars who had abandoned the mission of staying in class in the previous Bundesliga season. An interim personnel result in view of expandable economic indicators. And so the Bremen sports director Frank Baumann has announced "another fifteen to twenty" withdrawals and additions until the transfer deadline.
With the composition of a new team, everything is still in flux on the Weser. With the Schalke team they are already further. The completely renewed club from the Revier has been reorganized at its head: with Christina Rühl-Hamers in place of Peter Peters, who resigned months ago, as chief financial officer, with Peter Knäbel in place of Jochen Schneider as sports director and in the business of buying and selling professionals already at Mainz 05 accomplished Rouven Schröder as sports director. Twenty professionals have left the club, and more such as Nastasic, Mascarell and Harit, who were already overpaid in Bundesliga times, are to follow.
As things stand, eleven new players have come at second division terms, including Simon Terodde, who has moved from HSV to the Ruhr area, as the almost notorious second division shooter king. Christina Rühl-Hamers presented the club's political guideline in one sentence: "We have to pursue a medium-term plan in a commercially sensible manner and no longer chase after any short-term successes." last season the fifth, Dimitrios Grammozis, was allowed to stay despite the crashing relegation.
This Friday evening, as a former coach of SV Darmstadt 98 and a connoisseur of the second division, he is also facing a first practical test. Against a Hamburger SV, who once again diligently exchanged staff and trainers and is possibly happy that for the first time in three years they have not been treated as the first candidate for promotion. This pole position without a firm footing is now taken by Bremen and Schalke, depending on the wishful thinking.