Greuther Furth: A tale of Bundesliga woe

There’s no doubt that the Bundesliga has seen some pretty appalling sides over the years. Whether it be the infamous Tasmania Berlin team of 65/66 which went without a win for 31 games, and were relegated with 10 points.

Or in more recent memory the Schalke side of 2020/21 who finished the season with 16 points, five managers in eight months, and only another winless game shy of equalling Tasmania’s unfortunate record.

Another side that have unfortunately managed to find themselves in the Bundesliga ‘Hall of Shame’ would be Bavaria’s Kleeblatter; Greuther Furth.

Teams have had worse campaigns in the past for sure, but Greuther Furth have form with poor finishes. They’ve been in the top flight twice, gone down bottom of the league twice, and finished 12 and 15 points away from safety respectively.

The first time Furth shortly and not so sweetly graced the first division was in 2012/13. With 34 year old former German international and Schalke forward Gerald Asamoah their marquee signing, Albanian international Mergim Mavraj as captain, and a young Abdul Rahman Baba, a player now seemingly stuck in Chelsea’s loan and reloan grasp.

It wasn’t to be for die Kleeblatter however, despite winning the Bundesliga.2 with only four losses the season before, it was made abundantly clear the whole first division thing wasn’t for them.

They went 5 months between their first and second victories. All four of their league wins were away from home, only picking up four of their 21 points at home. And to put the cherry on top of their cake of misery they were knocked out in the first round of the DFB-Pokal to third division side Kickers Offenbach, a team who in the same season would be relegated due to £8 million worth of debts.

Seven consecutive seasons in the Bundesliga.2 followed, and Furth cemented themselves as a comfortable mid table side. But after finishing second in the 2020/21 season, Furth would get another crack at the top division, and it would be even worse than the last time…

The new season would get off to possibly the worst of starts, with a penalty shootout loss to fourth division side SV Babelsberg in the first round of DFB-Pokal, a result eerily reminiscent of their loss to Offenbach nine years prior.

All of football’s self-proclaimed clairvoyants looked to be onto something, with Furth falling to a 5-1 hammering away to Stuttgart in the opening game of the Bundesliga. But the alarm bells quietened, with a rather unfortunate 1-1 draw at home to Armenia Bielefeld, a game which Furth dominated, and were a bit short changed with just the one point.

However their old Bundesliga demons would soon catch up with them, with a 3-0 loss away to Mainz kickstarting a 12 game losing streak. A 12 game losing streak in which they conceded 40 goals: an average of over 3 goals per game, and was capped off with a 7-1 beat down from Bayer Leverkusen.

The winless run would leave die Kleeblatter 13 points adrift at the start of December on one point, if you’d have said they were already doomed, not many would’ve corrected you. They were already in desperate need of a miracle.

And the Furth faithful’s prayers were somewhat answered, the win had to come eventually, and it did. A 1-0 win at home to a high flying Union Berlin side courtesy of a hugely deflected goal from Havard Nielsen. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a glorious glimmer of hope.

Despite a 3-0 loss to Dortmund, Furth’s glimmer would slowly start to grow. Three draws on the bounce, were then followed by a win against Mainz. A 4-1 loss to Wolfsburg was quickly brushed off with a 2-1 win against fellow strugglers Hertha Berlin courtesy of Branimir Hrgota. It was mid-February, and were still 10 points from safety. But it was do-able.

Unfortunately that would be where the fairy tale would end. They would finish the remaining 12 games of the season winless, picking up five points and scoring only eight goals.

Furth were finally put out their misery with 3 games to spare with a 4-1 loss at home to Bayer Leverkusen. They’d finish the season with 3 wins, 18 points, a -54 goal difference, and a whopping 15 points away from safety. It had been a torrid season for Furth. But when you delve a little deeper, their horrendous season wasn’t surprising.

Going into the season Furth hugely lacked experience. They had only three players aged over 30. Only two of which got regular game time: Sebastian Griesbeck and Nick Viergever, and of those two it was only Viergever with a lot of high level experience, playing nearly 300 games in the Eredivisie.

It wasn’t just lack of experience with age either. Their squad massively lacked top flight experience as well. With their whole squad combined having only 331 Bundesliga appearances, less than former Dortmund full back Łukasz Piszczek.

The lack of experience problem was even further exacerbated by the fact that top scorer Branimir Hrgota accounted for a third of their Bundesliga appearances, and if you add wing back Jetro Willems into that, just those two players would make up nearly half of the squad’s Bundesliga experience.

Aside from Willems, Hrgota, and Viergever their squad was largely made up of players who played as squad rotation in many average Bundesliga sides in the past, with the rest either going up with Furth, taken from lower profile first divisions across Europe or taken from lower down the pyramid in Germany.

Of course that wasn’t the sole reason, after all many teams have stayed up with a similar assortment to Furth: Union Berlin being the easiest example to use. But they had a robust solid system, and Furth really didn’t.

Their defence was often a mess and constantly looked vulnerable from nearly every angle, their midfield was unorganised, and they could only rely on Hrgota to put the ball in the back of the net, they just looked as if they’d been taken from the second division at random and thrown in the fire.

Ultimately, it’s impossible to pin their torrid season on just one thing. But with it happening both times Furth have been in the big time, you really have to feel for the fans. And it’s a shame that their successes of the past such as their dominance in the 1910s will largely be dismissed in the minds of many football fans by two bad seasons in the modern day Bundesliga.

Follow us on Twitter @ProstInt