“Come to stay” – with this slogan on made-to-measure T-shirts, the Bundesliga professionals jumped VfL Bochum on the lawn of the Dortmund stadium in the late Saturday afternoon. On the 32nd match day, VfL did what hardly anyone had thought possible for the promoted team before the start of the season: staying up in the first league.
“This is celebrated!”
“Considering that most of us predicted before the season that we would go down without a hitch, it was a fantastic performance”, sports director Sebastian Schindzielorz summed up the situation briefly and concisely. Coach Thomas Reis was just happy: “It’s the culmination of the season. We’ve achieved a great goal that not many believed we could do.” The coach announced a big thing: “If you make it clear that you stay up in the league with a win at BVB – that’s celebrated.”
And so the team headed home a little later. Because in Bochum everything was decorated in blue and white. What had less to do with VfL than with an old tradition: since the 14th century, a huge party with parade and maypole auction has been celebrated in the city on the day before May 1st – it is one of the biggest festivals in the year at all.
Appropriate VfL contribution to the big party
So it was very fitting that the local soccer players were able to contribute to the festive atmosphere in the afternoon. According to rumours, some team members were still seen on the party mile late at night.
Schindzielorz and Reis, the two natives from Bochum, to whom VfL owes this triumph most, were definitely at the forefront of the party. After all, the two put a team on the Bundesliga lawn with limited financial resources that just fit.
VfL motto: Attack instead of walling off
Although playmaker Robert Zulj left the team after promotion and with Simon Zoller and Maxim Leitsch two top performers were out in the long term, the team apparently absorbed the bloodletting without any problems. And by no means with the usual wall tactics in such cases.