da esport bet： After suffering Premier League relegation at Elland Road, the midfielder has the perfect platform to recover in the Bundesliga
da bwin： Last season, Brenden Aaronson waded through a field of manure, but he's come out of the other side smelling of roses. While his Leeds team-mates prepare for a season in the Championship following their relegation, Aaronson will be competing at European football's top table.
The United States men's national team star has completed a loan switch to Union Berlin, and, owing to their incredible fourth-place finish last campaign, the minnows will be involved in the 2023-24 Champions League group stages.
Union's ascension to the grandest stage of them all would have seemed ludicrous just a few short years ago. But rise they have, thanks in part to a feverishly-devoted group of fans that refused to let the club die.
Aaronson is therefore joining an intriguing project in the German capital. It's also a move that makes sense, providing him with the platform to bounce back from a seriously difficult spell in England.
Getty ImagesScruffy underdogs
That Union Berlin have found themselves in a strong enough position to sign a player of Aaronson's profile is startling, considering they were playing in the fourth tier of German football as recently as 2006. These fluctuating fortunes neatly sum up the Iron Ones' history as a whole. The current iteration of the club was formed in 1965, though their lineage can be traced significantly further back than that.
Located on the East side of the Berlin Wall, they were hardly a powerhouse in the German Democratic Republic, a fact made all the more jarring by their splinter team, that formed in West Germany after the Soviets banned the club from all-German competitions, enjoying significant success. The 10 successive league titles won by local rivals Berlin FC Dynamo – who had links to the secret police – similarly acted to strengthen Union's status as scruffy underdogs.
Being 'outsiders', if not entirely anti-establishment, is another key aspect of their identity. The dominance of Berlin FC made it easy for supporters to embrace this image, as did their ramshackle stadium, the Stadion An der Alten Forsterei.
"When I started going in 1973, the stadium hadn’t been expanded yet, so the fans were packed in tight and the atmosphere was really one of a kind," one fan recalled in a illuminating piece for in 2018.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesOvertly counter-cultural?
During the late 1970s, Union's reputation as a 'safe' haven for those in opposition to the GDR regime blossomed. Although there remained a degree of restraint, there was a growing tide of shrouded dissent at matches in this period.
A personal favourite of some supporters was chanting 'The Wall has to go' whenever a team had a free-kick in a dangerous position. There is also claims that shouts of 'Stasi Out!' and 'Sh*t Dynamo' were aired on the terraces.
Perhaps the most open defiance to the status quo was Union fans' friendship with Hertha Berlin. The two clubs were based on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall, but Hertha fans would travel to games when their own team was playing away, singing provocative songs en route to the stadium which claimed that two sets of supporters 'belonged together'.
The above led to the authorities monitoring sections of the Union support closely. Police records show that those of the red side of the Berlin derby were also more likely to be punished than their FC Berlin counterparts if there was ever crowd trouble – which there frequently was.
Despite all this, there are limits to Union's reputation as counter-culture hell raisers, according to several who were there. “The great majority of Union supporters were just normal fans. By the end of the 1980s, many people had had it up to here [with the GDR] and came to Union games to get their unhappiness off their chest," long-time fan Theo Koerner has recalled. "Union fans were always quick, but you shouldn’t make resistance fighters out of them. Provocation is a part of football and people yelled out whatever they knew they could get away with without too much trouble."
Getty ImagesFighting to survive
Following the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s, many GDR-based clubs found it extremely difficult to sustain themselves. Union were no different. Lumbered with a stadium that was in dire need of improvement and an unsavoury minority of far-right supporters, they seemed a million miles away from reaching the Bundesliga, let alone the Champions League.
Fumbling around in the third tier, a solution was eventually found for their infrastructure problems, with supporters reaching into their own pockets to fund the stadium redevelopment.
It was not the first time that Union fans had shown ingenuity to keep the club afloat. During a particularly worrying period, supporters would give their ticket money to shady go-betweens in the forest surrounding the stadium. This helped keep the revenue away from their creditors who were crawling all over the books, with the money instead being used to make much-needed improvements around the club.
A miraculous rise to the top
Following decades of perilous instability, Union finally got themselves on an even keel in the 2000s. In 2006, they won promotion back to the third tier, but they were not there for long.
After finishing 12th and fourth, they romped to the 3.Liga title in 2009, with club legend Karim Benyamina netting 16 goals. His No.22 jersey was retired in 2011 and will only be worn again if someone is able to break his all-time scoring record.
Union had little trouble establishing themselves in the 2.Bundesliga following promotion, recording a string of mid-table finishes before flirting with promotion during the 2016-17 campaign. Although they eventually fell short, just two years later they would secure Bundesliga status, finishing third before beating fallen giants Stuttgart on away goals in a dramatic relegation play-off.
After the full-time whistle sounded, the pitch was flooded by Union supporters. It felt like things could not get any better. In fact, it was only the start.