Tomorrow, Arminia Bielefeld, the 2. Bundesliga leaders and Champions-elect will welcome Dynamo Dresden, the club bottom of the table, to the Bielefelder Alm. The match represents a chance for Arminia to distance themselves from second place Hamburger SV, who many had tipped to win the league easily at the beginning of the season. No one saw Arminia challenging for the league title, let alone leading for most of the campaign. Arminia’s manager Uwe Neuhaus has the club from North-Rhine Westphalia flying and is on pace for his first ever promotion to the Bundesliga in his 15 year career as a manager. For Dresden, the match is a straw to be grasped at, as results this weekend went against the Saxon club and left them a full five points off safety from automatic relegation. The clubs seemingly could not be further apart but there are two ties that bind them. Their relegations to the 3. Liga in 2014 and Neuhaus.
Let’s take a trip back in time, shall we? It’s May 11, 2014 and the final day of the 2. Bundesliga. Dresden and Bielefeld have been locked in a battle for 16th, the relegation playoff spot and Dynamo are currently occupying that spot with Bielefeld due for automatic relegation as it stands. They are level on points headed into the final day with Dynamo ahead on goal difference and the Fates saw fit that these two teams should face off. A draw at home is enough to give Dynamo the hope of a relegation playoff against the 3. Liga’s 3rd-placed team, SV Darmstadt 98. The match starts evenly and then, things seem to swing Dynamo’s way. Thomas Hubener sees a second yellow card in the 37th minute and Arminia are down to 10 men on the road. Suddenly it feels like Dynamo’s day. That feeling evaporates when four minutes later, and with the halftime whistle just a few minutes away, Fabian Klos gives Arminia the short-handed lead. Just after halftime, things get worse for Dynamo, with Cheikh Gueye receiving a second yellow and the man advantage is gone for the Dresdeners. Klos piles on that misery with another goal and things are looking bleak for Dynamo. Then, a glimmer of hope. Mickael Pote scores just after Klos’ 2nd and suddenly Dresden is back in it. Then, 16 minutes from time, Robert Koch equalizes for Dynamo. As it stands they’re headed to the playoff. The feeling did not last long, as Kacper Przybylko scored two minutes after the equalizer and gave Arminia the lead for good. Dynamo was going down. The scenes at full time in Dresden were ugly. Distraught ultras unfurled a banner that read, “You have one hour to leave the city.”
Arminia’s happiness at reaching the two-legged Relegation Playoffs was perhaps karmically short-lived and dramatically dissipated. Arminia looked certainly safe after the 1st leg on the road when they beat Darmstadt 3–1. But Darmstadt canceled out that win by matching the scoreline in Bielefeld. With the score 4–4 on aggregate, the teams headed to extra time. With just 10 minutes remaining, Bielefeld scored to make it 5–4 and as it stood they were safe. But in added time, Elton da Costa hit a long range volley that took a slight deflection and sailed into the Bielefeld net. Darmstadt were up, Bielefeld down and Arminia and Dynamo now had to find a way back to the 2. Bundesliga.
The 2015/16 season in the 3. Liga saw the teams diverge. Arminia wasted no time in going straight back to the 2. Bundesliga as champions. The run to the title was a bit of a close run thing, with MSV Duisburg pushing them to the final day. Klos played a prominent role, ending the season as the 3. Liga’s top scorer with 23 goals. Dynamo had the runner-up for top scorer, Justin Eilers, but his 19 goals were only good enough to help Dresden limp to a 6th place finish and a full 11 points off of the promotion places. The manager who had started the campaign, Stefan Boger, only lasted until February of 2015 and his successor, Peter Nemeth, lasted just the 2 remaining months until the end of the disappointing campaign. With Dynamo falling behind the team that had relegated them in the first place, they looked to a 2. Bundesliga manager to get them back on track, Uwe Neuhaus.
Uwe Neuhaus’ footballing career began as a player who spent most of his career in the lower divisions of Germany. He spent his most significant playing time at Rot-Weiss Essen and Wattenscheid 09. His managing career got started there, at Wattenscheid, and he made his way around Germany, slowly growing in stature and reputation. His stay as manager of Borussia Dortmund’s reserve team lead to a chance to return to Rot-Weiss Essen as the boss. It was from there that he landed the manager job at Union Berlin and his steady hand saw the capital’s club stay in the 2. Bundesliga for his 7 seasons in charge. After that 2013–14 season which had seen Dynamo and Arminia go down, Neuhaus had finished 9th with Union and he and the club decided to part ways by mutual consent. After a season off, Dynamo Dresden came knocking. They represented a chance for Neuhaus to revitalize a club. Union had stabilized, and perhaps stagnated in the 2. Bundesliga, but Dynamo needed new blood and a new mentality. Neuhaus brought it and with immediate results.
The 2015–16 3. Liga campaign for Neuhaus and Dynamo Dresden will live long in the memory of Dresdeners. At the start, Neuhaus looked to an Arminia Bielefeld castoff, Pascal Testroet to add a new dimension to the team and some help up top for leading scorer Justin Eilers. The team was nearly unstoppable, losing just 2 games out of 38, scoring 75 goals and a +40 goal difference and finishing eight points clear of runners-up and Dynamo’s Saxon rivals, Erzgebirge Aue. Eilers and Testroet lit up the scoring charts, finishing first and third respectively and combining for 41 goals. Dynamo also announced that year that they would be debt-free for the first time since the Reunification of Germany. Dynamo was back in the 2. Bundesliga and felt like Neuhaus was the one to take them one step further, the Promised Land of the Bundesliga.
In the season that Dynamo dispatched the 3. Liga with ease, Arminia survived their first season in the 2. Bundesliga quite comfortably. They finished 10 points clear of the playoff and 12th overall, seemingly laying themselves a nice foundation to consolidate their gains since returning to the 2nd tier. With Dynamo back the following season, it seemed Arminia should continue to climb while Dynamo consolidated but the 2. Bundesliga was in for a bit of a shock. Dynamo had done some shrewd business in the summer. They loaned in a striker from Nuremberg’s reserves named Stefan Kutschke and a winger from Brentford named Akaki Gogia and the team was off to another flyer. There was a period of the season where it looked like Dynamo might actually pull off the back-to-back promotion but that was not in the cards. Nevertheless, they finished 5th and the talk around the club was that they could genuinely push for promotion the following year. Bielefeld on the other hand finished just a point from the relegation playoff places, requiring a draw in, you guessed it, Dresden and a last-minute Heidenheim goal against 1860 Munich to stay safe. Dynamo looked set to move up with Arminia looking doomed, but the momentum did not continue moving the way most thought it might.
Prior to the 2017/18 2. Bundesliga season, Justin Eilers left Dynamo for greener pastures at Werder Bremen and the club could not get the replacements moving at the same level. Moussa Kone, Haris Duljevic and others just could not seem to have the impact of those before them. Dynamo had shelled out quite a bit of money in transfers and were expecting a big return, but it never came. They seemingly swapped spots during this season with Arminia. Dresden finished 14th, just a point from relegation. Meanwhile, Arminia did not make any big groundbreaking transfers but finished fourth. The momentum had shifted once again and the low finish had unsettled the Saxons pretty substantially. Meanwhile, it was Bielefeld’s turn to dream of a top flight return. Then, at the start of the 2018/19 season, Dynamo made a decision that changed the fate of both clubs substantially.
Dynamo started the campaign with a win and a loss and were set for an easy matchup in the first round of the DFB Pokal against 4th tier team SV Rodinghausen. The match turned out to be anything but easy and Dynamo crashed out of the cup, losing 3–2 in extra time. To Dynamo’s board, this loss was unacceptable and Uwe Neuhaus, the man who had done so well over the last 4 years with Dresden and brought them back from the 3. Liga, was unceremoniously sacked. Arminia did not move immediately, as their manager Jeff Saibene was fresh off his fourth place finish from the last season. By December, however, Arminia’s relationship with Saibene was on the rocks, as the Luxembourg native had failed to register a win in 10 straight matches. A 1–1 draw with Sandhausen was enough for Arminia and they sacked Saibene. The same day they announced that he would be succeeded by Neuhaus, the man cut adrift by Dynamo. He oversaw the final 18 matches of the season for Arminia, winning 10 of them and giving Bielefelders a taste of the success to come. One of those 10 wins was a 4–3 win over Dynamo in Dresden which Dynamo lead 3–1 at halftime. This was a kick in the teeth for Dresdeners but they had no idea just how bitter of a pill they were about to be presented with in the wake of Neuhaus’ departure.
With Neuhaus gone, and Dynamo heading in a different direction, many of Neuhaus’ players departed before the start of this season. Moussa Kone, Haris Duljevic, Lukas Roser, Markus Schubert, Rico Benatelli, and Erich Berko all found themselves on the way out either preseason or in January. The manager spot also became a hot seat that no one could seem to keep. Mark Walpurgis gave way to former player Cristian Fiel who gave way to current manager Markus Kauczinski with interim managers between all of them. This lack of stability across the squad led to the 2019/20 season being a nightmare for Dynamo supporters. With a lot of new players coming in, there has been a general lack of consistency, with Dynamo sitting bottom of the table and only registering back-to-back league wins on one occasion this season. The instability sees them favorites to go down and they likely require a minor miracle to avoid relegation this season now.
The season for Neuhaus and Arminia has been nothing short of incredible. A few shrewd free transfers defined their business in the offseason and the cohesion and amplification of their current squad has led them to a place where they will almost certainly be promoted and likely win the league. Remember Fabian Klos from the victory over Dynamo in 2014? He’s still at Arminia after all this time and at 32 is the club captain and their top scorer with 19 goals. Their second top scorer, Andrea Voglsammer, has been at the club since joining in January 2016 on a free from Heidenheim. This is his third season running with ten or more 2. Bundesliga goals after not registering a single goal in the competition at Heidenheim. His resurgence began under Saibene, but this is the magic of what Neuhaus has done, taking much of his current squad and making it a high performing unit.
Tomorrow, Arminia have a chance to more or less condemn Dynamo to the 3. Liga, just as they so dramatically did in 2014. However this time, Arminia will not be accompanying them, but rather ascending to the heights of the top flight. Dynamo saw what an effect Neuhaus could have in the past and now, after their rash 2018 decision, are being forced to watch from the bottom of the table as Neuhaus leads Arminia to the Promised Land. It is poetry at its most pure and potent. It is inspiring and demoralizing. It is a dream and a nightmare. It is the romance and tragedy of football all wrapped up in one season that has been uplifting or devastating depending on your perspective. We can only imagine how this divergence will impact these clubs in the coming years but I would not be shocked if we see their fates intertwine again in the future.
