Ghost written by an Augsburg fan who spent time working for a charity for half a year, whats not to love about that. We welcome Martin Echtler to review the season that was for Augsburg. But in a few words WHAT A SEASON.
After the first two games I expected the worst – cup-exit in the first round against the 1. FC Magdeburg, a club from the third league and a 0-1 defeat against the Hamburger SV (the HAMBURGER SV!!!) in the first matchday. It seemed the journalists were right: The good old FC Augsburg with their little money budget, their team without „big names“ and their unexperienced coach is definitely the candidate number one for facing the relegation. For a few the question was: Who will follow the FC Augsburg to the second league this season?
But the little-short-in-money-and-without-big-names-club from Bavaria did very different. After a weak start into the season they started to collect point for point! The new players – especially Michael Gregoristsch (a former player from the Hamburger SV;) and Rani Khedira (the brother of superstar Sami Khedira) – got integrated into the team very fast. The unexpericed new coach Manuel Baum fomed a strong team which has started to play a high competitive, fast and attractive kind of soccer. An impressive example was the 1-0 success against the Champions-League-team RB Leipzig.
In the sequel the FC Augsburg played a very constant-successful season without big scandals (probably the only one was the suspension of defender Daniel Opare after he tried to blackmail the club), big injuries or other crisis. The 8th season in the Bundesliga went in summary unexpected smoothly, because there was never a high risk of facing the relegation. Without the big money you have to be creative and you have to fill the gap with a high degree of motivation and a „never-giving-up“ attitude. This was the FC Augsburg during the season 2017/2018.
