HSV promotion: a personal chronicle of the long waiting

This is a story about patience. About hope and despair. Perhaps this story gives an answer to the question of whether everything that lasts for a long time will actually become good. It is a story about the ability to suffer and art to be able to laugh at yourself. It is about a hell trip for which the reverse certificate seemed to be lost. It’s about power boxes that change color. And the self -esteem of an entire city, at least large parts of this city. And it’s about what that does with yourself, with me, who goes to the HSV as a reporter and once with my son in the fan block, right behind the goal.

It is about the HSV, the Hamburg sports club, for which a throat opened exactly seven years ago, the black, biting smoke spit out.

It was May 12, 2018, in the northwest of the Hamburg Volkspark Stadium, the eternal clock, which showed how long the HSV has been part of the Bundesliga: 54 years, 261 days, 00 hours, 36 minutes and 02 seconds. The club was the dino among the Bundesliga clubs, which is why before and after a home game a plush dinosaur jumps over the field, the mascot. Football fans have often remained child’s heads.

When the time stopped, on a Saturday, after a 2-1 against Mönchengladbach, which was not enough for rescue, there was a popping in the fan curve, smoke bombs were ignited, and the police were positioned on the field. Due to the smoke swaths, however, the visitors tuned the club song “My Hamburg very much”, “times are often difficult.”

The HSV was also able to grow a little bit for the neutral viewer at that moment, and so I felt like that. Hamburg, this city, which is often butt as soaked, showed sympathy with the people lost. And the deeper the club in the coming years, the absurdly his failure appeared, the more affection grew.

In the following years, breakdowns that even Buster Keaton, known as the man who never laughed, had made it smile. Few examples have to be enough: On the last matchday of the 2019/20 season, the HSV would have to win against Sandhausen in order to at least reach the relegation. Final score 1: 5. Then constantly the lost balls in midfield under the aegis of coach Tim Walter, who led to goals, about whom the other team was surprised how bank robbers are surprised, to whom the director leads the safe.

The hoppelball, which the otherwise mostly outstanding goalkeeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes stepped into his own network, in the city derby against FC St. Pauli in December 2023. The game ended 2-2 in winter, and football had never seen a more beautiful snowball battle. Other HSV games were like a car accident that could not be solved, mostly against promoters from the third division. The demons of the football sub -world seemed to have set up domestically in the changing room of the HSV.

And while one was still talking about the process in the club that had been initiated, all other teams of the second division appeared (Paderborn! Darmstadt! Heidenheim!), But not the HSV.

It was never due to the fans. They were there, filled the Volkspark on every damn match day. And when a season worsened, it was possible to experience how large parts of the city had a kind of war painting, the colors of the HSV appeared everywhere, on power boxes, on bridge pillars, in allotment gardens, entire stairs to S-Bahn stations in black and white blue. And in the end again: nothing. Sometimes it wasn’t even scarce.

The Lockdown months in the Corona wedding were particularly gray. Nationwide, the league charges without an audience took place, ghost games, dead silence in almost empty round. And with every further season hope, so, but now! With every new trainer the conviction: he knows how it’s done. Dieter Hecking didn’t know. Tim Walter didn’t know. Steffen Baumgart, who is said to have slept in HSV bedding as a child, knew the most.

So a silent observer of all the mishap, all the bankruptcies, all the disappointments pushed to the fore: Merlin Polzin, assistant coach since 2020, took over in November 2024, the grayest of all months, from Baumgart, only as a bridge solution, but then as a man who brought back success. Until in April to get everything together again and the wizard Polzin seemed to shrink to the Zauderer Polzin. And as at a party where you can tell that you will go home alone, the first fans turned three game days before the end: “Let us stand up for a few more years in the second division,” you heard of those who had already seen a lot in the Volkspark.

I also saw a lot on the HSV myself. First from where journalists are sitting in the stadium, on the press reverse. There, concentrated competence gathers at HSV: decades of companions of the association, former high -ranking of the sports press, editor of local advertising sheets, even a doppelganger of Steffen Baumgart sits there from time to time. There are also hard -boiled, cool football reporters, for whom all of this is just a job.

But a critic who only has to write only about tragedy or comedy would like a happy ending at some point, also for his own salvation. Always shaking your head makes bitter. And so it has been experienced in the past few weeks that some of us, who are actually committed to neutrality, open up, back and forth, the redeeming gate, which often failed to do. Football reporters also have a heart, that was to be experienced on the HSV press spaces. And honestly: self -esteem increases if you can report from the first division again. How else are you among your colleagues?

I have experienced much more in the south curve of the stadium, preferably in Block 11 A, right behind the goal. There, the pulse of the HSV audience, male, female, from very young to very old, can be felt. There is the roar fan, which appears in short trousers at every temperature, a lean type, very penetrating mouth, not a friend of short corners. There are the beer drinkers who make up their feelings between themselves and the beer cup. There is the fan who takes his father with him, whose memories are slowly fading. This father used to play against Uwe Seeler, and when he hears the singing in the stadium, he knows again where he is; And he can also complain about a bad pass.

And there are my son and I, for a few years. It started so that I took him with me for educational reasons. We both are glowing supporters of a glorious team from the south of Germany, and I thought it helps to learn to lose.

In order to look forward to a win the following week, which is more as a duty or officially or hardened. We have experienced lavish afternoons and have bitter nights (the 0: 2 against Hertha BSC Berlin in the Relegation, 2022). We have destroyed many stadium sausages and bags of break popcorn. We sing the hymn with us, we let the fan scarf circle when the HSV has scored a goal. My son has his favorites, once Sonny Kittel, now Ludovit Reis, number 14. I like Bakery Jatta best because of his story.

The brightest HSV moment in recent years was the one when the club and its sporting leadership stood in the way of the human hunters of the Springer press who wanted to prove Jatta that he had fled to Germany under the wrong name. The HSV defense has never been as stable as in this matter. The Springer press has been silent since then that Jatta is still in Hamburg (albeit violated for a long time).

There were good days, but the bad days predominated at some point: In the late phase of Steffen Baumgart, my son no longer wanted to go to the Volkspark. Was only one phase, even with Polzin, the desire for football came back, even in the 2: 4 against Braunschweig, he didn’t want to despair. My big promise, which has been valid for years, is: If the HSV is climbing, I will get season tickets. Cheap number, right? Never gets anything out of it anyway, friends said.

It also turned out, which also distinguishes the HSV spirit, again very differently. And of course my son and I would have had to sit in the stadium on Saturday evening, the bratwurst in hand, the scarf around his neck, within the auditory of the desk with the short pants, near the best football buddy, who often organized cards, not far behind us the mother of a teammate from my son’s youth team. A small stains assembled football enthusiasm. But this Saturday my son celebrated his confirmation; We could have been able to rise from the evening family table and drive to the stadium. We experienced the ascent, which we did not think so far, with a full belly in front of the television. The football buddy sent many pictures from the south curve, also from the piece of lawn that his son had got after the end of the game and the storm.

On May 10, 2025, the goal of the football hell released HSV in another, in the bright direction. Instead of black smoke bombs, fireworks were ignited throughout the city. Dear colleagues from the press reverse: I hope you have hugged yourself after all the years. My son and I clapped several times as in the stadium, only without a scarf.

Does anyone have two season tickets left, please?