Football landscapes were already changing. Then an earthquake struck.

Dusseldorf, Germany – German, as expected, has its own term: Grössenwahn. There is no direct and accurate English translation. Paranoia, perhaps, although arrogance may be better. Grössenwahn indicates overestimating your abilities, possessing delusions of grandeur.

It is the word Oliver Voigt arrives as he tries to describe the fate and fall of Kaiserslautern, the German third division club who has been tasked to recover something similar to its former, now, at a perilous moment for sport, with less margin of error.

This, after all, is not a team accustomed to such mitigating circumstances. Traditionally, Kaiserslautern is one of the greatest clubs in Germany. In 1998, he was the German League champion, and a year later he reached the Champions League quarter-finals. Its stadium was the venue for the 2006 World Cup. It has a population of 50,000, and is named after Fritz Walter, captain of the West Germany national team that won the 1954 World Cup.

Kaiserslautern had five players on this team, more than any other club. Voigt said: “This victory restored the entire nation to its dignity after the war.” “The World Cup win built a German identity, and five of the team were from this club. Kaiserslautern was a club at the heart of German sentiment.”

He said that generations of Germans saw the club as a fellow from Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and the rest of the country’s great powers. Now, however, Kaiserslautern is “on her knees.” She spent most of the past decade in second degree in Germany. In 2018, for the first time in its history, it sank in third place. (Before the season was suspended, he was in the middle of the table.)

“There is an easy answer to what happened,” said Voigt, who was appointed late last year to be CEO. “If you spend more than you earn, if you act like you are older than you, you will end up like F.C.K.”

Kaiserslautern may be an extreme example, but it is far from being alone. Over the past two decades, he has traversed the European football stream, which radically changed the game scene. A group of traditional big powers in major cities retreated from their perch, captured and overtaken by a group of rebel groups, fueled by money and ambition, not burdened by history.

It happened in England, Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa. It happened in Spain, to Deportivo de la Coruña, Racing de Santander and Real Zaragoza. It happened in Italy for Turin, Sampdoria and Genoa, and in France for Marseille and Bordeaux.

There were others too, teams that seemed to be slipping into the abyss, fabulous names that had set foot on the water for a very long time: West Ham and Newcastle, perhaps, or Fiorentina, or even AC Milan.

All of them found themselves in the same trap: first they were left financially behind by the great powers in the game, then they fell into the course of events from young, smart and intelligent – not just teams like RB Leipzig, Manchester City, and at the European level, Paris St.-Germain, products and ambassadors Either conglomerates or nation-states, but also the likes of wolves, Atalanta, Sassuolo and Ibar.

However, the style in Germany was most evident. Kaiserslautern joined the Third Division by 1860 Munich. Next season, Karlsruhe may also be there. The second Bundesliga currently contain both Stuttgart and Hamburg, envoys of two of Germany’s largest cities and former heroes. Werder Bremen, the 2004 German champion, may move back to the next season.

Each of these case studies can track its demise to a different set of conditions, of course. Some teams can refer to financial mismanagement, others to chaotic ownership. Some just made bad decisions and then did more to try to fix them.

But there are common threads linking the clubs, and as football begins to reconcile with the biggest crisis it has faced in life, it can be discerned in warning of what might come next.

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to even the largest teams in Europe, which consider themselves too big to fail. As Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern Munich president said, it is indeed a crisis. Failure to play the season, which resumed on May 16, and therefore being forced to return the money to broadcasters, will make it a disaster.

Rummenigge said that the possibility of playing games behind closed doors for the rest of the year will have a “huge impact” on everyone: The loss of revenue from tickets, institutional entertainment and merchandise is “something that everyone should take care of, perhaps even the biggest clubs more.”

The danger, of course, is that clubs will not adapt as they must adapt to this new reality, that they will continue to spend more than they earn, and they think they are greater than they have become, to surrender to the temptation of Grössenwahn. Just as the fallen giants can testify, after all, when conditions fade, the pressure for success does not always follow him. Not immediately, sometimes not at all.

“If we win one game, the assumption is that we will be promoted,” said Voyager of Kaiserslautern. “If we win a little, people talk about the German League. There is enormous pressure on the club. It is normal: regardless of our youngest fan, everyone on the field saw that this team is winning the title. For them, where we feel now is unrealistic.”

This pressure causes a whirlpool of rapid repairs and knee reactions. Managers, directors, and ideas come and go, and none of them see until their conclusion, and none of them is given a real chance to succeed.

“The crew here has seen a lot of change,” said Thomas Hitzlsperger, who was a player in Stuttgart, and now, 38, the club’s CEO. It is the only club in the big city. Fans feel frustrated quickly. We have Bush, Porsche and Daimler here. Expect to see the best. The club lacked the patience to plan and implement a plan. “

At the same time, there is internal resistance to new ways of thinking, and a tendency to rest on the glory of tradition. Even before he became CEO, Hitzlsperger noted how Stuttgart was “slow-moving.” The club’s board convinced him to hand over control of his pledge to help the club become more modern. He spoke in his interview about how Stuttgart can remain “proud of its history”, but he needed to learn to be a “club of the 21st century”.

The apparent paradox here, of course, is with Leipzig and Hoffenheim – two clubs that have actually been established in the past two decades, two groups whose identity is entirely linked to modernity. But these are not the only reference points for the lackluster upper middle class in Germany.

“Mainz and Freiburg are not a big club, but they are two league systems in the German Bundesliga,” said Jonas Boldt, sports director of perhaps the biggest example of a force that has fallen in European football, Hamburg.

The legendary Dino of German football – called because it was never relegated – and the once-off European champion, Hamburg finally pulled out of the best German trip in 2018. Its downfall could be the moment when the new order finally toppled the old one, when the traditional middle class of football retreated European youth generation is not only a difference but an idea.

His demise, in Boldt’s view, was the result not only a “vicious circle” of bad decisions, but an indication that the club had become comfortable in itself, and very guaranteed to the degree of staring with a hazy eye for what it was in the past. “Tradition and romance are important,” he said. “But you have to work professionally to try to develop something.”

Bolt joined Hamburg last summer, after spending an entire Serie A season. Like Voigt and Hitzlsperger, he was chosen to put his club back where it was.

The three men are ambitious, optimistic, and energetic. All three, for their positions, are relatively young. Bold, having built his reputation in Bayer Leverkusen, was drawn to Hamburg because of the “challenge” of building something permanent.

This challenge was scary before the epidemic. In the era of coronavirus, it is still more difficult. Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart and Hamburg must learn how to work on reduced budgets, in a sterile and strange environment, in an atmosphere of deep uncertainty.

But these three, at least, have already identified the need for change, realizing that instead of resisting the tide, they need to change it. However, there will be many others in this dismal new reality, which this realization has yet to be enacted.

Some may look at Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart, Hamburg and the rest, and learn their lessons. Others, who think they are isolated by history, may stumble into exactly the same traps, fall into the cracks, which this intermittent and changing scene swallowed.

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