St Pauli lose narrowly to Bayern but stadium masterstroke wins admirers

It was, in many ways, one of those games we see far too many of today. A significant gap between two sides in the same division all too apparent, with the lesser just keeping their powder dry and holding on, aiming to give themselves a puncher’s chance in the final stages. Bayern Munich emerged victorious thanks to an out-of-this-world rocket from range by Jamal Musiala, a moment of quality seemingly designed to underline the gulf.

St Pauli were the home side yet feeding off scraps. They had three shots during the match, none of them on target. They are still scoreless at home after five matches, now an unenviable Bundesliga record. Have a group of people ever wanted to hear Song 2 by Blur, which greeted goal after goal in last season’s dizzy title-winning campaign, so badly? Alexander Blessin’s team could not have given any more – they collectively ran almost six kilometres more than Bayern – but it wasn’t enough. In one sense St Pauli had suffered a 1-0 thrashing. In another it was a day of frustration.

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The last time Bayern had visited Millerntor, in May 2011, they hammered the locals 8-1, sealing their relegation to the second tier on the penultimate day of the Bundesliga season. This was nothing like that. It was a sign of progress but if the prize was much closer, it evaded the touch. “They had been in the game,” wrote Nils Weber of Hamburger Morgenpost. “Not always on equal terms with their clearly superior opponents, but within reach of something tangible until the final whistle. Promoted team against title favourites. The final result actually looks really good. They held up well but didn’t take anything tangible home with them. That hurt.”

It may have done but this was a day – a weekend – for focusing on what football could be, not just what it is. A weekend to celebrate. St Pauli have a new plan to close the gap, if not to Bayern then to other potential top-flight competitors. It was announced at the beginning of last month that this most socialist of clubs had a plan to be able to exist at the top table in the modern world. A cooperative of supporters would buy a majority stake in Millerntor, raising tens of millions to support a club whose community-focused ethos has compelled it to reject commercial deals from gambling or crypto enterprises, for example.

And for all the past week at the Millerntor, the building’s facade heralded the future. The large club crest was covered with the badge of the cooperative formed to purchase the stadium as the initiative got set to launch. The initial take-up has been strong. St Pauli announced on Monday morning that 6,650 individuals have already become part of Football Cooperative Sankt Pauli eG, pledging a collective sum of €8,661,500. “We have experienced a huge rush,” said the cooperative board’s spokesman Andreas Borcherding, “and we are looking forward to working with the members of the cooperative.” There is a way to go. The cooperative aims to raise up to €30m in total, with each share costing €850, the minimum investment, but the emphatic response has stoked real optimism. “All of this shows us that the time is absolutely ripe for a different kind of football,” underlined club president Oke Göttlich, “and a different kind of financing in professional football.”

St Pauli’s particular image and character is without doubt a selling point. Millerntor is a “special” place, as Vincent Kompany was moved to say after the game. “There aren’t many better things than watching a football match here,” added his sporting director Christoph Freund. So St Pauli preserving their greatest asset, while monetising and protecting it (there are club vetoes built in to prevent a covert hostile takeover), seems like it might be a masterstroke.

On the pitch it might be more graft than craft. Eric Smith’s block on Harry Kane to prevent the England captain from getting his customary goal, in which the Swedish defender injured himself, is indicative of the sort of investment Blessin’s players are making. Their moment will come at the end of the month, when the next home game is against Holstein Kiel, the other promoted team and the one directly below Die Kiezkicker in the table, third-bottom against second-bottom.

On the pitch bad runs are made to be broken. Off it a football club’s home is sacred, and St Pauli’s holds the key to their future and their sense of self, for this season and beyond.

Union Berlin 0-0 Freiburg, Leipzig 0-0 Mönchengladbach, Werder Bremen 2-1 Holstein Kiel, St Pauli 0-1 Bayern Munich, Mainz 3-1 Dortmund, Bochum 1-1 Leverkusen, Heidenheim 1-3 Wolfsburg, Stuttgart 2-3 Eintracht, Augsburg 0-0 Hoffenheim

Talking points

• Bayern’s reward for putting in the hard yards was a second successive weekend in which all their numbers came up, with Leizpig (now five points behind) held at home by an impressive Borussia Mönchengladbach, as were Bayer Leverkusen (nine points back) and Borussia Dortmund (10 behind) losing.

• Leverkusen dropping points for the third Bundesliga game in a row wasn’t really the story on Castroper Straße, as rock-bottom Bochum celebrated only a second point of the season via substitute Koji Miyoshi’s smartly finished and thoroughly unexpected 89th-minute equaliser. The newly-appointed veteran coach Dieter Hecking (or Hec-KING, as Bild headlined) was the hero of the hour, though, for breathing life into their ailing season, despite having barely coached since leaving Hamburg in 2020. “He’s an outstanding coach,” enthused Bochum midfielder Gerrit Holtmann on the Hecking effect, “one with charisma and aura. He gives us something and you simply believe everything he says. If he told me that I would play for Real Madrid, I would believe him.”

• Whether Dortmund’s latest setback really constitutes a headline is also open to discussion. Their 3-1 loss at Mainz was not helped by Emre Can’s early red card – playing 65 mins with 10 men was absolutely the last thing they needed given their current injury crisis – but this was another defensive disasterclass, yielding a sixth straight away defeat in all competitions. “I’m fed up with driving home from every city with a defeat. It’s pissing me off,” moaned Julian Brandt. It’s not just a defensive issue either. After his howitzer in Hamburg Musiala has scored more in away Bundesliga games that Dortmund as a whole (five versus four).

• Goals are coming more easily to Eintracht Frankfurt, with Omar Marmoush’s sublime free-kick turning out to be the winner in a five-goal Sunday thriller at Stuttgart; the Egyptian forward now has 11 for the season, making him joint Bundesliga top scorer with Kane. Sebastian Hoeness’s hosts almost managed a colossal comeback from 3-0 down, with what had initially appeared to be a stoppage-time equaliser by Chris Führich ruled out after prolonged Stuttgart celebrations and then a lengthy VAR check. Captain Kevin Trapp, who also saved an Ermedin Demirović penalty, complained to Dazn that it was “unacceptable that we stopped playing at 3-0 up” but nevertheless, Eintracht sit pretty in third going into the international break.

• Elsewhere there are concerns for two of the league’s European adventurers. Heidenheim goalkeeper Kevin Müller had a nightmare as they slumped to a home loss against Wolfsburg, their fourth defeat in five, while Pellegrino Materazzo was fired on Monday after Hoffenheim’s goalless draw at Augsburg left them fourth from bottom with just nine points from the 10 games.