It almost went well and the club was back in the second division.
But this little mishap at the end of last season somehow fits the TSV 1860, the entire club history.
Because when has something gone really well for Munich in the past few years?
The anger about the missed opportunity has not completely disappeared, but coach Michael Köllner sees it pragmatically.
"It will have made sense that we did not ascend," he said last in Münchner Merkur and tz.
You haven't won anything, says Köllner, “if it hits you upstairs and knocks you down again”.
Because the money for the then necessary personnel investments is missing at the clammy traditional club, which still depends on the commitment of the investor Hasan Ismaik.
Only this week the association announced the "extension of the sustainable finance package".
So it would be better to play one more year at the front.
The start of the new third division season was halfway successful with a win against relegated Würzburg and a draw against Wehen Wiesbaden.
In the DFB Cup game this Friday against Darmstadt 98 (8.45 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the DFB Cup and on Sky), the Munich team are outsiders in their own stadium, which is filled with a few spectators, but not without a chance.
The task of this season
Köllner sees his task this season as stabilizing the performance of the talented young squad, which has only a few veterans, because you have to "go up with a team that is already competitive and then bring in reinforcements in a targeted manner". He got a few new players, the Munich team are now more diversified. But in the first two games, one of the most convincing players came from within their own ranks. The 22-year-old Tom Kretzschmar was allowed to represent goalkeeper Marco Hiller - and received a lot of praise for his performance. Against Darmstadt, however, he will have to vacate the place again.
The fact that 1860 was so close to returning to the second division and is still being traded as a secret favorite this season is motivation. "We'd have to lie if we said we don't want to get promoted," says Captain Sascha Mölders. But that's also a burden. "Our rucksack is the expectation," says sports director Günther Gorenzel. “The bar is high, the burden is higher.” They know their way around, because fans and those responsible have always found it difficult not to dream of the big coup right from the first small successes. But whether the young players from their own offspring, who are the future of the club, can handle it so well is questionable.
Mölders can do this. The striker has participated in the eventful past years with the forced relegation to the regional league in 2017 and promotion to the third division. At 36 he is still the top scorer and, above all, the driving force and leading figure for the young. The vote for “Footballer of the Year” showed how important Mölders is for the entire league. With her he finished ninth, tied with Dortmund's defense chief Mats Hummels.