So I met with Erik at Clubheim (in Millerntor Süd) to record an episode for his podcast (also in my “Toby talks about FC St. Pauli” curation), and that evening was such a blast! We met right before the away game in Paderborn started, recorded for an hour, then watched the game in the Clubheim. Before the game I tried to stay sober, because I had my car at a train station, but during the game… well. There was a lot of wine (so great to have some high quality white wine in a football clubheim) and some Pfeffi schnaps involved, and I left my car at the train station. We even tried to record more for the podcast, but now as we are sober again, we decided that the dog ate the recordings. No further comment.
So, not only the wine was great, but watching an away game in a pub where everyone is really excited about the game, everyone joins in to stadium chants, and you can just marvel at the game with like minded and opinionated people is fantastic. We even had a Paderborn fan standing next to us, which was an interesting addition.
The Game: Paderborn vs St. Pauli
Anyways, let’s talk about that game. Lukas Daschner scored twice in the first half, and poor Karol Mets was forced into an own goal in second half, making it a 1-2 away win for the boys in brown. Lucky win? Yes, since Paderborn had a couple of 100% chances they didn’t score, but we did so, too. Deserved? Absolutely! The first half of this match probably was the best (!) football I have ever seen us play in years, maybe even ever since my memories of Max Kruse and Fin Bartels is already a bit blurred. Dapo creating a lot of stress on the left side, Leart joining in and being flexible to also be present in the middle, lots of incredible defensive work by Eric, I was just in awe about everyones performance on the pitch. And what an incredibly cool goal by Lukas for the 0-2? That could easily have passed the goal on the left, and everyone would have been angry about that overly self-conscious attempt, but it went in, and now…? Lukas is in the Kicker squad of the day! He even prepared that goal himself with a great pass to Saliakas on the right, who hadn’t anyone near him at all, and then Saliakas played this wonderful pass back to Lukas. Wow.
Six wins in a row. What now, are we going to be promoted? Well, at least I think we don’t have to worry about demotion anymore, since 14 points separate us from Bielefeld on 16th, very unlikely to fall back to that. But also, Heidenheim is up 11 points compared to us, almost equally unlikely to do that. So we can just relax now. Celebrate every win and every position we move up. Don’t worry too much about losses and draws (yes, I don’t believe we’ll win all remaining matches). This really feels wonderful, not having to worry, not having to fear of dropping out of promotion spots (looking at you, Vorstadt). Thank you FC St. Pauli for providing this already in March after being 1 point away from the bottom for Winterpause.