The crash into amateur football, a spectacular coaching engagement, a severe corona outbreak and the prospect of several million euros from the subsequent transfer of a player who has long been sold – the year of Spielvereinigung Unterhaching was turbulent like hardly any before. In an interview, club president Manfred Schwabl looks back on these eventful months and explains how he wants to align the club in the next few years.
SZ: Mr. Schwabl, what was the moment of the year for you? Let’s start with the positive experiences.
Manfred Schwabl: Clearly the nomination of our former youth player Karim Adeyemi for the national team in September and his debut against Armenia in Stuttgart when he scored his first goal. I was at the stadium myself and personally congratulated him after the game. That was a great experience not only for him and for me, but also for our entire club.
From Unterhaching to the national team: Karim Adeyemi.
(Photo: Laci Perenyi / imago images)
Although Adeyemi doesn’t even play for Haching anymore. But apparently you negotiated well during the transfer in 2018, when the then 16-year-old moved to Red Bull Salzburg for 3.35 million euros …
Yes, we will receive a good 20 percent of the transfer fee if Karim is resold. Incidentally, that applies to all income that Salzburg records with this player. So possibly even for a further resale.
There is speculation that a move to the German Bundesliga is imminent. Since up to 40 million euros could be called.
My message is: Karim shouldn’t take the third step before the second. Solid development is more important than aiming too high too quickly. Going to the Bundesliga now is sensible because he will get the urgently needed working hours there. One must not forget that there will be a World Cup in 2022 and the EM in 2024 in your own country. In the long term, however, I definitely see him in the English Premier League, where he fits in best because of his physique and his speed.
Which brings us to the question of what the negative high point of 2021 was.
That was of course relegation from the third division. Especially the home game five rounds before the end of the season, when we lost 2-0 to Türkgücü, even though we should have won urgently, hit me hard. In retrospect, I would have preferred to let the A-youth show up than to look at such crap.
In the summer, a new coach came for the rebuilding, Arie van Lent had to leave and was replaced by ex-national player Sandro Wagner, who was originally intended to be the U19 coach.
Sandro is just a godsend for us. But I think he imagined the task to be easier than it is. Our newcomers, which came from other clubs, haven’t played for a long time, he has to deal with this difficult personnel situation. But Sandro is an incredibly positive guy, he’s brutally empathetic and always open to opinions. He also makes no difference when it comes to the appreciation of his interlocutor, whether that’s me or a U11 player. He never lets the mister over important hang out.
Coach since summer: Ex-national player Sandro Wagner.
(Photo: imago images)
How do you rate his work as a television expert at Dazn?
His work for us is not affected by this and of course it is very good for the image of the association because it also puts us in the public eye.
Now the previous regional league season was anything but as expected. After 22 of 38 games, Haching is only eighth with 36 points.
You have to admit that the structure of the players that we brought in last summer fell short of expectations. In tabular form nothing goes up or down. And that’s why we’re going to change our strategy slightly now: Of course, getting promoted remains our sporting goal, our ambition already dictates that. But we will take our time to consolidate and focus even more on the next generation in the future. Rather, it has to be about setting up the club in such a way that it survives even if we don’t play in the second division in the medium term. Especially since we are already two climbs away from it.
But how is that to be done? TV marketing alone shows how urgently it would be to get up: In the regional league there is no television money, in the third division it’s around one million and in the second division you suddenly get around 15 million euros.
Corona has straightened out many things: It is increasingly about economic issues apart from television money and about getting socially involved as an association. We only have one chance: to continue investing in our youth training center and in our infrastructure. And that is exactly what we will do more intensively. We have acquired a plot of land next to the stadium and want to offer it a sensible use.
Conversely, that means: No more external newcomers for the first team?
Of course, the first team remains our figurehead. But in a certain sense the values shift and I don’t want to gloss over that. We are already in the process of planning the next season in terms of sport. In the second half of the season everyone now has the chance to recommend themselves for continued employment. But we cannot be very considerate of individual fates.
So in the future, following the Adeyemis model, are other players to be sold at a profit?
As it is currently developing, we can achieve high transfer revenues with our talents. Take U17 national player Maurice Krattenmacher, who scored 18 goals in 13 games in the B youth division and has a long-term contract with us. He came to us six years ago from FC Bayern, where they no longer wanted him because his father was supposedly difficult. I can only say that we have never had a problem with the player or his father.
In the youth field, things are going very well, the U17s are second in the table, ahead of clubs like Freiburg, Bayern or Hoffenheim or Augsburg. And the U19 is in the top third of the table as a Bundesliga climber …
This is thanks to the trainers in the youth training center and especially from NLZ head trainer Marc Unterberger. We want to be represented in all top-class youth leagues in the long term and we are on the right track.
You mentioned Corona earlier: SpVgg was also hit hard by the pandemic in autumn.
It was really strange: when no one was vaccinated, we had no problems. Then suddenly twelve players were infected, one of whom had recovered and ten had been vaccinated, including my son Markus. And then even my little granddaughter was affected, thank God not dramatically. It was really annoying that our opponent Bayreuth questioned the positive tests at the time. I can only say: Don’t take football so seriously, especially not in our Hammelliga!