Friday night in Hamburg in the depths of winter and, at the Millerntor Stadion, St Pauli are seeing out their first win of the Bundesliga season.
Flares are burning in the freezing night and banners whip through the cold air. The home stands are duelling with each another, trading songs across the pitch, to salute a 3-1 victory over Holstein Kiel. Beyond the stands, the neon glow of the winter fair is pulsing in the distance as a blue and green orbiter somersaults in the dark.
St Pauli are newly promoted to the Bundesliga this season. Prior to this game week, they had scored just seven goals from 11 matches, none of which had come at home. They have been resilient. They have by far the best defensive record in the bottom half of the division and have conceded fewer than Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen. But that lack of goals at the other end has kept them towards the foot of the table. They have consistently been in the bottom four of a division from which two are relegated automatically and one faces a playoff.
This was a game that had to be won. When the full-time whistle blows, goals from Manolis Saliakas, Morgan Guilavogui and Johannes Eggestein have secured the win, the three points, and — until Saturday afternoon at least — the safety of 15th place.
The Millerntor roars. It has seen its first win and goals — by St Pauli at least — of the season. Survival suddenly seems possible.
The home support celebrate victory with their team (Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
Six months ago, everything was different. Needing a win to clinch promotion, St Pauli hammered Osnabruck in brilliant sunshine. When the full-time whistle blew on that 4-0 win, the fans rushed onto the Millerntor pitch from all four sides. The players were swallowed up and Fabian Hurzeler, the head coach, was hoisted up on shoulders and held up in the light.
Hurzeler’s was a remarkable story. In his first full season coaching professional football, he had — in spite of a meagre budget — taken St Pauli back to the Bundesliga for the first time since 2011.
And then he was gone. Off to Brighton. He has done wonderfully well and most who paid attention to his rise are not surprised by that. From a St Pauli perspective, however, it was devastating. The team he left was full of players who were performing at the highest level of their careers — Jackson Irvine, Dapo Afolayan, Eric Smith, Elias Saad and many others — but without him the Bundesliga was a daunting rather than exhilarating prospect.
Added to this, Marcel Hartel left for MLS club St Louis as his contract expired. Hartel scored 17 goals and provided 12 assists last season. He took corners and free kicks, too. St Pauli lost their coach and their top scorer in a single summer, and with them their hope.
St Pauli’s coach, Alexander Blessin (Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
It was quite an inheritance for Alexander Blessin. He moved from Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium and replaced Hurzeler in June, and has had the unenviable task of galvanising a team loyal to someone else. The dynamics of the challenge he faced were understated, too, which is really a feature of local life. St Pauli — to the outside world — are not really about the football. The game comes second, behind the politics, the activism and the socialising. When people talk and write about St Pauli, often the last thing they mention is what happens on the pitch.
That might reflect how some supporters feel. Particularly many of the older ones, for whom the club is a meeting point and an identity. It is for many of the young people, too, and for those who arrive in Hamburg from outside Germany, searching for their first sense of belonging.
But the football matters — probably more than many realise. Promotion brought an outpouring of pride. There were tears in the stands and among club staff, too. Six months later, that same pride is still there, even if it feels more defiant now in the midst of this fight against the drop.
After the game, Jacob is on the U3 train towards Barmbek. Someone had spilt beer on him during the game and the right shoulder of his grey hoodie is still a slightly different colour to the rest. He tells The Athletic the perception that football is not that important at St Pauli is a source of annoyance. “Because I’m super proud of the team and we achieved a lot by getting promoted. And now we want to stay. Yeah, I love the fan scene, but we can have both, no? That with the football.”
Another fan is sitting opposite him. He’s wearing a three-quarter-length black jacket and a black hat with St Pauli’s distinctive Totenkopf. It’s not clear whether they went to the game together, or are just sharing a journey home, but he agrees.
“Look at HSV. Every year,” he says, rubbing his thumb and forefingers together, describing how much Hamburg’s other club spend, “and they are still in the 2.Bundesliga. But look at this.” He gestures through the window, vaguely back towards the Millerntor.
No two St Pauli supporters seem to think about the club in quite the same way. That is a lesson from a few years spent in Hamburg. The St Pauli fans on the carriage melt away with each passing station. On the platform at Barmbek, The Athletic talks to an older fan — bundled up against the cold, wearing a brown and white scarf in a thick knot — who did not go to the game at all, or even watch it. He just spent the night in a bar close to the ground and seems bemused by the question.
It depends who you ask. It depends what mood they are in. It also depends who is doing the asking.
A St Pauli fan cheers on his team (Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
But the atmosphere inside the ground is the real tell. The Millerntor quivers with each kick of the ball and thunders its approval at every clattering tackle. Perhaps the perception is of a crowd with their backs to the game and something else in their heart. Not at all. It is desperate to see its team survive.
And they may just. Blessin has not reinvented Hurzeler’s team. They are still good with the ball and determined to play out from the back, as Hurzeler insisted on. Their defence is intact from last season and that has certainly helped. Goalkeeper Nikola Vasilj joined the club a few years ago and he has brought continuity. He makes an excellent penalty save in the first half to keep the score 1-0.
But Blessin has also coached his way around some significant issues. His side do not have a prolific goalscorer, at least not a target man or traditional No 9. Last season, that was less of problem. In the 2.Bundesliga, St Pauli averaged almost 60 per cent possession in games and were very much a front-foot side. At the level above — inevitably — that control has weakened, and the average is closer to 40 per cent.
Vasilj celebrates with the fans (Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
In response, Blessin has coaxed wonderful counter-attacking impact from Afolayan and Guilavogui, who combined masterfully for the second goal against Kiel, and encouraged Eggestein to be one of the most hard-running and selfless forwards in the division.
As of Friday, he has run 126km so far this season, the eighth-furthest in the Bundesliga and the only forward to be inside the top 10. The Kiel game was his payoff: he assisted the first two goals and scored the third, finally killing the game in the 86th minute. Eggestein is criticised for his lack of goals and has faced considerable pressure from local media. His scoreless run has been a constant topic in press conferences. Needless to say, there was no more popular goalscorer on Friday and nobody who enjoyed the night more than he did.
So, this is a team and they have their crowd at their back. St Pauli are not happy to have their day out in the Bundesliga and then vanish away without a fuss, back to worrying about everything other than the football.
They like it here and they want to stay.
GO DEEPER
Derby Days, Hamburg: The Stadtderby
(Top photo: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images)
