For all those who are now worried that the 50,000 or so people in the large district town of Heidenheim are slowly going crazy, Thursday evening provided a reassuring realization. Others can go crazy, but at 1. FC Heidenheim they remain reasonable on the 555-meter-high Schlossberg even after the greatest success in the club’s history. “It’s unbelievable that we managed it,” said coach Frank Schmidt about the team’s entry into the league phase of the Conference League. But when he was asked about the draw this Friday shortly after the 3:2 (1:0) victory against Bollklubben Häcken from Sweden in the playoff second leg, the 50-year-old’s euphoria was limited.
“I have no idea, the fans want Chelsea, I don’t even know who’s there,” said Schmidt. “Besides, we’re training tomorrow at 2:30 p.m., which means we won’t even get to see the draw.” Training won’t be postponed because of the draw, asked the SWR reporter. “No,” replied Schmidt, “what’s important is preparing for Augsburg, not the draw.” Despite the reminder of their daily duties and the home game in the Bundesliga, they will have been elated to learn on Friday that the glorious FC Chelsea will indeed be coming to Heidenheim for the league phase game. Also coming soon to the Ostalb region: St. Gallen and Ljubljana.
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In the new format of the Champions League, FC Bayern and BVB will play against FC Barcelona. VfB Stuttgart will travel to the Santiago Bernabéu, among others, while Leipzig and Leverkusen will have a difficult schedule.
Schmidt’s relaxed attitude at least partially explains Heidenheim’s upswing. Either they have more peace and quiet than their competitors in more hectic locations and therefore work better and more cleverly. Or it’s the other way around, and Heidenheim work better and more cleverly and therefore have more peace and quiet. In any case, the Heidenheim phenomenon can be explained in particular by coach Schmidt and his concentration on the essentials.
The fact that Heidenheim has a permanent place on the European football map at least until Christmas is the culmination of the continuous development under him and the other important head of the club, Holger Sanwald, who has also been a department head for many years, managing director and is now chairman of the board. “It is a historic moment for our club. It is actually unimaginable, something really big,” said the 57-year-old: “I used to be at the relay day in Burgberg with the second team, and tomorrow we can go to Monaco.” The draw will take place there.
Heidenheim is very pleased with Paul Wanner, the loan from Munich
Schmidt once played as a defender for Heidenheim’s first team in the fifth-tier association league. In 2007, he took over as coach of the then fourth-tier top division club. In 2009, the club was promoted to the third division, in 2014 to the second division and in 2023 to the Bundesliga. Last season, the promoted team beat FC Bayern 3-2 after a 0-2 deficit and finished in eighth place.
The fact that they then lost their three best attackers, Tim Kleindienst, Jan-Niklas Beste and Eren Dinkci, who had scored 30 of the 50 Bundesliga goals, doesn’t seem to bother the team much. They are functioning pretty well again, almost regardless of whether the first or second row is on the pitch. Heidenheim have already played four competitive matches this season, and won all of them. Marvin Pieringer scored the lead against Häcken (30th minute) before the game was turned around by two goals from the visitors in the second half. But substitutes Paul Wanner (84th minute) and Mathias Honsak (90th+2) turned the game around again.
Wanner, 18, can also explain why Heidenheim is so successful. At the beginning of 2022, shortly after his 16th birthday, the highly talented player had become FC Bayern’s youngest player in the Bundesliga and later in the Champions League, but he mostly played for the youth team. In September 2023, Wanner was loaned to Elversberg in the second division. The Heidenheim team was very impressed by this career move. They suspected that there was someone who thought like them and wouldn’t go crazy so easily, and from then on they watched Wanner closely before agreeing a follow-up loan with the Munich team. “He’s smart, that’s why he stays humble,” said Sanwald: “We didn’t know that he would do things like that at 18, but we hoped so. I’m so happy, I think he’s one of the greatest talents we have in German football.”
At FC Bayern, they know that Wanner can mature well in Heidenheim. Not just in the Bundesliga, but also in Europe. Perhaps FCH will become a little bogeyman there too. “We don’t have to hide from anyone,” says Pieringer. And because some people from Portugal to Finland are now wondering where Heidenheim actually is and what “on the Brenz” means, Pieringer says: “We want to show who Heidenheim is.”
