Robin Gosens: Last-minute transfer makes Union Berlin team angry

Sometimes the football business is merciless. The pressure is particularly high in the final hours of the open transfer window, when professionals move from one club to another literally at the last second. Sometimes such transfers fail due to details or mistakes made by those involved, or due to an unforeseeable change of heart. This was not the case in the case of Robin Gosens, who was loaned from 1. FC Union Berlin to AC Florence just before the deadline. In the case of the former national player, it was rather surprising that the transfer still went through.

Hours earlier, at the team’s lunch before the evening’s match against FC St. Pauli, everyone involved had assumed that Gosens would stay in Berlin. He was supposed to play, coach Bo Svensson was counting on him, as was the whole team.

But things turned out differently.

Everyone thought: Robin Gosens will play in the evening

When coach Svensson later prepared the team for the duel, Gosens had already undergone a final medical test to determine his fitness level – and it was successful. After just one season, it was clear that the record signing and top scorer of the previous season was already gone, at least for the time being. A “very, very strange day,” summed up Svensson.

The team was more than confused. After the difficult 1-0 victory against the newly promoted Hamburg team, captain Rani Khedira burst out. “I have to be honest: It’s a catastrophe,” said the captain of 1. FC Union Berlin on DAZN. “The smart people should think about the fact that we are football players, but we are also human beings.” He had previously been asked how the team had reacted to the last-minute departure of national player Robin Gosens.

The 30-year-old Gosens stood there “almost with tears in his eyes” and was “completely distraught,” Khedira said. “At lunch it was clear that he was staying with us, that he was playing. And then two hours later, after his afternoon nap, we got the news that it was going to work out after all,” he explained the back and forth on Friday. “I find it strange if you have to deal with that on match day.”

Robin Gosens wanted to return to Italy

It should be noted that Gosens had forced the change. The only problem was that it was only realized in the final meters, and that was obviously not foreseeable beforehand. A real stressful moment for everyone involved.

As Union managing director Horst Heldt emphasised, Gosens moved to Tuscany for purely personal reasons. “He had always told us that he wanted to move if he had the opportunity,” said Heldt, who had received several inquiries for Gosens, who spent the best part of his career at Atalanta Bergamo and Inter Milan: “And then it doesn’t make sense to keep a player who isn’t really into it.” As usual, Union did not disclose the exact terms of the transfer.

Even though the move came as a surprise on the last day of transfers, Union has already taken precautions by signing Tom Rothe from Borussia Dortmund II. The 19-year-old immediately took the position of the national player. “He struggled in the first half hour,” said coach Svensson about Rothe’s first Union home game, but also pointed out the circumstances. “He was only able to sort himself out three and a half hours before the start of the game,” explained Svensson. “He was better in the second half, we will have a lot of fun with him.”

Meanwhile, Gosens is looking for his chance on the international stage again. In Florence, which reached the group stage of the Conference League on Thursday, the tears could quickly dry again.

With material from DPA