FC Augsburg ranks among the league’s top three in the second half of the season, alongside FC Bayern and Borussia Dortmund. Yet hardly anyone notices.
A In this current Bundesliga quiz question, the majority of football fans in Germany would probably fail. Three teams are currently tied at the top of the second-half table, who besides Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund also count among the top three? What? FC Augsburg? Seriously?
That is probably the fate of this small Bundesliga locale near Munich. Self-proclaimed football biologists enjoy talking about the DNA of a club. And in this DNA, it seems, the FCA is inscribed: it is a club to be forgotten.
If football fans in a limited time had to recite all 18 Bundesliga clubs from memory, the FCA would likely be the leader among the forgotten. In the final tables of the last eight seasons, no club has settled so consistently in the lower midrange. The high point was eleventh place; the absolute low point had already been reached at fifteenth.
This is, on the one hand, due to limited financial resources and, viewed positively, on the other hand to the decades-long expertise in how to disrupt the game of opponents who are individually better placed. Bayern Munich, in case that might have slipped from memory again, has this season only lost to FC Augsburg.
FCA Once Again Plain and Simple
But isn’t there more than just a pale average with occasional outliers, one naturally asks year after year in Augsburg. Isn’t it time for a man with visions in the highest position? With the signing of Sandro Wagner, the former assistant coach of the DFB team, Augsburg wanted to break into a new era. As an adviser to national coach Julian Nagelsmann, he was hyped and brought a lot of ideas for attractive and attacking football to Augsburg. But none of them materialized.
So the club replaced him with Manuel Baum, a football teacher of the old Augsburg school. He had previously held the office there. His recipe? Keep it simple. Give the team a clear framework for action. Augsburg plays again as in the old days. Compact and unadorned. The playing culture is maximally plain, the tackling behavior maximally aggressive. At the moment FC Augsburg sits in ninth place. The latest run of success was also aided by the schedule. Heidenheim, St. Pauli, and Cologne were the defeated teams.
But perhaps the Augsburgers can maintain the level. They are currently in ninth place. It could be a wild season.
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