Considerate|intentional or careless? Does the "King of the North" really not want to return to the Bundesliga?

We all know that the nickname of Bayern, the 11th consecutive Bundesliga champion, is "King of the South", since there is a south, naturally there is a north, so who is the "King of the North"? Hamburg. However, this former Bundesliga giants can only play in the Bundesliga.

In the Bundesliga, Hamburg has been sinking for 5 years. Since entering the 2010s, they first experienced several years of struggle to relegate, and then after being relegated to the second division, they "did not think about it", and failed to win the first division for many years. And this season's 3-0 defeat to Stuttgart in the first leg of the relegation play-offs, Hamburg's promotion hopes are slim again - "King of the North", when will you return, and are you willing to return?

Former overlord, Bundesliga "dinosaur"

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Bundesliga, and 60 years ago, in its first season of the Bundesliga, Hamburg already had German football superstars like Uwe Schiller for life.

In the late 70s and early 80s, Hamburg entered its heyday, with Kevin Keegan and even Beckenbauer, not only won the Bundesliga championship three times, but also conquered Europe for the first time in 1977 and lifted the European Cup Winners' Cup.

As for the highest achievement, it was naturally the first time in the team's history in 1983 and the first time so far to win the Champions League! Coupled with the runners-up in the 1982 Confederations Cup, he almost completed the Grand Slam of the three major European Cups.

The Hamburg team 40 years ago, the coach was a generation of famous coach Hapel, with Kartz at the back, Magath, who later became a famous coach in the midfield, and legendary center Hrubesch in the front, and finally 1-0 in the Champions League final against Juventus such as Platini, Bettega, Bonnak and Paulo Rossi.

Although Hamburg have not won a Bundesliga title since 1983, they have maintained an achievement that they are proud of: the only team that has never been relegated from the Bundesliga and played all seasons in the Bundesliga! Therefore, it is known as the "Bundesliga dinosaur".

However, since the beginning of the 2011-12 season, Hamburg have often been mired in relegation, finishing third from bottom twice in 2014 and 2016, and only staying in the Bundesliga through the play-offs.

It wasn't until 2018 that the record of 54 years and 261 days was over, and Hamburg unfortunately experienced relegation for the first time in its history. Originally, people thought that they would soon return to the Bundesliga, but five years later, the "King of the North" has not returned.

It's not that there is no chance, it is always bad

In fact, in the first season after relegation, Hamburg has a chance. In the 12th round, they were at the top of the table and continued until the 23rd round, when they fell to second; However, in the last 9 rounds, they only achieved 1 win, 3 draws and 5 defeats, and got a pitiful 6 points! In the end, it was fourth place, only 1 point away from second and third place, which is a pity.

In the 2019-20 season, Hamburg has been in the top three of the table since the second round, hovering between top and second place in between, and it looks fine. As a result, in the last 5 rounds, they only scored 5 points with 1 win, 2 draws and 2 defeats, and the result was still fourth, and they were only 1 point away from qualifying for the relegation play-offs.

In 2020-21, Hamburg had twice been ranked first in eight consecutive rounds, but from round 27 to round 31, there was another wave of five rounds without a win, and the last eight rounds were only two wins, and it was even in fourth place! Only this time it was a little further away from third place, 4 points behind.

In this way, Hamburg was dubbed the "Bundesliga four madness" by fans. Judging from the ranking chart of these three seasons, they have been stable in the top two or three in the middle of the season, but in the sprint stage, they plummeted and fell out of the top three, which in turn triggered the "conspiracy theory" mentioned below.

In the 2021-22 season, Hamburg finally finished third in the Bundesliga on goal difference and got a chance to play in the play-offs, and they also took the lead in the first leg by beating Hertha Berlin 1-0 away from home to Magat!

But in the second leg, amid the cheers of 50,000 home fans, Hamburg conceded one goal in the first 3 minutes, and in the 65th minute, the goalkeeper made a mistake in front of the position, and was scored by the opponent's free kick, and finally suffered a two-goal reversal and fell at the last minute!

Deliberately? Hamburg really doesn't want to go back to the Bundesliga?

So the question is: is it really that difficult to go from Bundesliga to Bundesliga? Why hasn't burger been going up? Let's break it down.

There is a reason, which may be more "conspiracy theories", that is: they do not want to return to the Bundesliga at all, everything is intentional!

It may sound incredible, but if you think about it, it's not entirely unreasonable. On the one hand, the Bundesliga is Bayern's own, the entire league is not attractive and competitive, even if Hamburg returns, it will not be able to challenge the status of the king of Nanda for a long time, but it is easy to write all kinds of shame, but it is better to stay in the Bundesliga, which is also one of the strong teams, just the so-called "rather be a chicken head, not a phoenix tail".

On the other hand, after returning to the Bundesliga, if you want to succeed in relegation and even play well, you must invest a lot of money, but Hamburg just has no money.

Due to the restrictions of the "50+1 policy", investors cannot control the club, which is difficult to attract funds, and the Hamburger Club stipulates that the quota of a single shareholder cannot exceed 24.9%. The "Hamburg King" Quane owns 20.57% of the shares, but he is limited in wanting to increase his shares, so the tycoon who invested 1 billion euros from 2010-18 decided not to provide financial support to the team!

It's not that I don't want to go back, it's too difficult

Another possible reason is that Hamburg does not want to go back to the Bundesliga, but it is really difficult and luck has not been on their side.

One of the difficulties is the format of the relegation play-offs, which is inherently unfair. In the final round of the league, the Bundesliga kicked off a day earlier than the Bundesliga, and the two-legged play-off match was another "double game of the week", and the Bundesliga team played home first, so it was easy for them to establish a big enough advantage in the first leg to lose the suspense directly in the second leg.

This year's Stuttgart is like that, with one more day off than Hamburg, and with the final round of the Bundesliga and the first leg of the play-offs at home, the fitness reserve is better and the advantage is clearly superior.

The second difficulty is naturally that the strength of the Bundesliga team is already stronger, because their income and investment are more than the Bundesliga team.

In terms of value, Hamburg's team is worth only 37.65 million euros, and the most valuable Reis in the team is only 6 million euros. What about Stuttgart? The total value is 116 million euros! There are 7 players who are worth more than 6 million, which is a very big gap.

The numbers also show how difficult it is: since the relegation play-off system was reinstated in 2009, Bundesliga vs Bundesliga teams have won only 3 times: 5-0 Cottbus at Nürnberg in 2009, Hertha Berlin 4-3 in Düsseldorf in 2012, and Union Berlin 2-2 Stuttgart in 2019 (thanks to away goals), and the proportion of successes is very small!

The same goes for Hamburg itself. Participated in the play-offs three times before, twice as a Bundesliga team, and the result was that they all defeated the third place in the Bundesliga and successfully relegated; Last season, he played only in the Bundesliga, losing to Hertha Berlin, 16th in the Bundesliga.

This season, they are still third in the Bundesliga, and it is not so surprising that they lost 3-0 to 16th Stuttgart in the first leg?

In fact, Hamburg has really worked hard this year: 66 points in the Bundesliga 34 rounds, which is already the highest score in a single season since relegation! Last season, it was even 1 point more than the Bundesliga champion Schalke 04. However, this season, Hamburg is one point less than Bundesliga champions Heidenheim and runner-up Darmstadt, so they missed the opportunity to promote directly.