St. Pauli and its 31-year-old manager Fabian Hürzeler are going to the Bundesliga.
St. Pauli’s 3-1 win over VfL Osnabrück on Sunday sent the Hamburg-based club to the top of the 2.Bundesliga, and mathematically ensured Kiezkicker of a spot in the top flight for 2024-25.
A win next Sunday in the final round of league matches would guarantee the top spot in the division, but the celebrations broke out with 33 games played, as St. Pauli’s victory moved the club six points clear of having to go through a promotion playoff.
Any worries about coming up short were settled by a double from Dapo Afolayan, with Marcel Hartel notching a third in the 68th minute. Lars Kehl’s stoppage-time penalty for Osnabrück did nothing to dampen a raucous atmosphere at Millerntor-Stadion, which celebrated by flooding the pitch en masse.
St.Pauli are up. pic.twitter.com/YplOkSq20Q
— Seb Stafford-Bloor (@SebSB) May 12, 2024
It’s been a remarkable turnaround for a club that was struggling badly just 18 months ago.
Hürzeler — a former Bayern Munich academy player born in Houston — was appointed as interim manager on December 6, 2022, with St. Pauli heading into the German winter break winless in six outings and on the edge of the relegation zone.
Hürzeler began his fledgling career as a head coach with a 1-0 win at 1.FC Nürnberg when play resumed, and has hardly looked back. St. Pauli would win the first 10 games after the young manager took over, finishing the season on a 13W-2D-2L run that pushed the club up to fifth place.
At one point, Kiezkicker went unbeaten from April 29, 2023 to February 10, 2024, a run of 29 matches in league and cup play.
The promotion snaps a 13-year stay in the 2.Bundesliga, and this time around St. Pauli will be hoping to stick around at the top of the German pyramid a bit longer. Both of its previous promotions to the Bundesliga saw the club, famous worldwide for its openly left-wing politics and pirate iconography, relegated after just one season.
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