Everything looked like a home win with a special history for FC Augsburg – but then Union Berlin, outnumbered, secured a conciliatory end to the first half of the season in the Bundesliga.
Marin Ljubicic secured a deserved point in the second minute of injury time for Berlin, who had fallen behind thanks to an artificial shot from Alexis Claude-Maurice in the sixth minute of injury time in the first half. On the one hand, it was strange that the equalizer came shortly after a red card for Derrick Köhn (89th), but Augsburg only came into the game after a fan protest.
Game interruption throws the Union out of sync
Because the FCA supporters openly showed what they thought of the fact that their team only had to complete the first half of the season on Thursday and that the English week was not held on Tuesday and Wednesday as usual. After about 30 minutes, the fans threw bouncy balls onto the lawn and showed a poster with the inscription “You’re cutting up our game days? We’re cutting up your playing time” – and in doing so they actually helped their team enormously.
The Augsburg fans hold up a protest banner against the matchday times
The resulting interruption of the game for over five minutes completely threw Union out of rhythm. The team of Coach Steffen Baumgart, who had extended his contract the day before the gamehad previously clearly dominated the game, but missed good chances through Andras Schäfer (19th), Woo-yeong Jeong (22nd) and Oliver Burke (29th). Then the balls flew out of the Augsburg block and the Berliners flew out of the corner.
Claude-Maurice is extremely worth seeing
There followed a long phase without any highlights, but then there was an explosion of cheers from the previously protesting FCA supporters. Claude-Maurice scored his first goal of the season with a great shot from 28 meters from a standing position and a redeeming goal for Augsburg to make it 1-0 (45th + 6th). Coach Manuel Baum’s team started the new year with a 4-0 defeat at Borussia Mönchengladbach and slipped to 15th place – moments like these are worth their weight in gold in the relegation battle.
Augsburg’s Alexis Claude-Maurice celebrates his goal
Claude-Maurice almost had a moment like that again, but his free kick in the 58th minute hit the post. So there were inches missing to make the first win after just one point from the last three games much more likely, but the chance was growing by the minute anyway because Union still couldn’t find its way back to the strength it was before the fan protest.
Ljubicic gives Union a point
It was still annoying that Anton Kade missed the best opportunity to make it 2-0 from close range (62′). Nevertheless, everything looked like a home win because nothing came from Union and then Köhn was thrown off the pitch after a kick in the face by Samuel Essende (89th). But then Ljubicic struck shortly before the end, kept an overview in a confusing situation and scored from close range (90th + 2).
Augsburg gave away two points and remains stuck in 15th place. On Sunday, the Baum team wants to repeat the success against SC Freiburg (5.30 p.m.) in order to gain breathing room in the relegation battle. Meanwhile, Union remains ninth in the table and, like in the 2-2 draw after being 2-0 down against Mainz 05, was able to get the next character point this year. The next opponent is the in-form VfB Stuttgart (two wins in 2026) on Sunday at 3:30 p.m.