Longing for the underdog: Is Elversberg our new football fairytale?

Elversberg! Short-statured Bundesliga newcomer, village at the bottom of the world, two games, two wins, and next Sunday they will blow away FC Bayern. Ahem. There it is again, the longing that the little one can beat the big one, the David can beat the Goliath, the hedgehog can beat the hare - and for upright leftists it goes without saying that capitalism will ultimately be overcome through solidarity, community, morality and so on.

That's one thing. The other is the clear checker's perspective that these are illusions of alienated and longing for meaning individuals in late capitalism in order to escape the monotony of the work process for a short time.

Or about the experienced craftsmanship of journalists who produce click fairy tales against their better judgment. What goes up, must come down, and not only in “Springer” do the objects in the elevator go up and then back down again. For once, I don't want to complain, but rather point out that today's "football miracles" are not miracles, but the result of years of good work by people who hold leading positions in the management of a football club.

This includes the acquisition of money, ideally a large sponsor plus a medium-sized company. Seen this way, Elversberg is not a “football dwarf” – or if it were, then fellow promoted team Schalke would be one too. The difference is that Schalke's “tradition” consists of decades of failure, while Elversberg's tradition consists of continuous positive development. We will see in the coming years whether this can be expanded.

The times are long gone when a promoted team called 1. FC Kaiserslautern could become German champions straight away. That was 1998 in the middle ages of the Bundesliga. In football, “everything is possible”, as people like to say. But not nothing either. But there are many things when a manageable group of people work well for years.

SC Freiburg, FC Augsburg, Mainz 05, these are the great success stories of modern times. SC Freiburg in particular is the model company for all those who want to establish themselves among the national elite in the long term, beyond the corporate, billionaire and limited partnership culture. Freiburg is the role model for clubs like Elversberg, Paderborn, Heidenheim and all clubs whose tradition should lie in the future.