In the first of our 18 tactical previews to be released here on Get German Football News, it’s time to take a trip to the capital city’s Köpenick quarter! How fares the famed East German club of Wolf Biermann and Nina Hagen? Er…well. Let’s just say that training camp has Bundesliga watchers fearing more of the same. Urs Fischer once led Union Berlin to three consecutive years of European football, culminating in the Champions League berth at the end of the 2022/23 campaign.

Something newer fans of the Bundesliga may not be aware of concerns the fact that none of those Fischer squads really had a lot of pop to them. None of the 2020/21, 2021/22, or 2022/23 teams scored more than 51 league goals. These were extremely defensive-minded teams that squeezed goals out of the likes of Max Kruse, Joel Pohjanpalo, and Kevin Behrens. The ill-fated “Champions Lease” side of 2023/24 – which did have to cope with the losses of Taiwo Awoniyi and Sheraldo Becker – started some long overdue unraveling.

After two consecutive years of battling relegation, a wretched preseason during which Steffen Baumgart’s Union failed to score a goal in their last four friendlies leaves one concerned. Honestly, none of the other two trainers who followed Fischer (Nenad Bjelica and Bo Svensson) really did much to alter Fischer’s tired and flawed system. As we shall go into greater depth about below, Baumgart has been trying out loads of different stuff in camp. Not much happens to be working, however, and a coach likely to be on the hot-seat looks increasing desperate.