Thursday, April 8th, 2021
Coach Baumgart leaves SCP
The last painter with courage and anger
Needed by David
Steffen Baumgart brought a breath of fresh air to the Bundesliga in the 2019/20 season, with his emotionally honest manner on the sidelines and thanks to the courageous appearances of his SC Paderborn. At the end of the season, the coach says goodbye, while he and the SCP created a piece of Bundesliga history.
Nobody can take this record away from him, the 73rd minute of the game of his SC Paderborn at Fortuna Düsseldorf is running: In mid-May 2020, Steffen Baumgart entered the history books of the Bundesliga when he was the first coach ever to make a regular fourth change. Thanks to the new exchange rules after the league restart after the Corona break. In Paderborn, of course, they have countless other historical memories of Baumgart, who is now declaring that he will be leaving his coaching post at the end of this season.
Baumgart will leave the second division soccer team after four years at the end of the season and will not extend his expiring contract. The coach took over East Westphalia in April 2017 in a complicated situation in the 3rd division, but initially could not stop the downward trend and was relegated to the regional league with the SPC. Actually. Because Baumgart’s team benefited from the fact that TSV 1860 Munich did not get the league approval and remained in the 3rd division. Then the coach started his success story and within two years led the club first in the 2nd division and then back to the Bundesliga by marching through.
“I’m not shut up”
In the upper house, the SCP then caused a sensation with extremely courageous appearances. Because Baumgart didn’t even think about letting his team play like a little climber. Powerful, aggressive and committed, the East Westphalia even put the very big guys under a lot of pressure. FC Bayern (once under Niko Kovac, once under Hansi Flick) could only just win 3-2 in both duels, while RB Leipzig even defied SCP in a draw. And then there was the great performance at BVB in the sold out Signal Iduna Park in November 2019: At halftime, the cheeky climber led 3-0 (!!!) in front of a good 81,000 spectators. It was only through two very late goals that Dortmund managed to win a draw.
The immediate relegation followed, but the memory of the Bundesliga will remember Baumgart’s Malocher appearances on the sidelines. Always loudly and wildly gesticulating, the coach often had no voice at all during the interviews after the game. And if something didn’t suit him, he said that too. There is actually no longer such a type in the Bundesliga coaching team, the game leaders are too concerned about their public image today. But Baumgart liked to trumpet: “I will promise everyone that I will not shut up if I have the feeling that the referees have acted wrongly. Then I will say something about it,” he grumbled at the beginning of 2020 was warned again with a yellow card on the sidelines. “It’s much worse that the word respect always comes up. I have respect for every referee, but I expect it from both sides.” As an honest guy, the trainer also admitted when he got too emotional and had no problem apologizing.
Of course, their coach is sacred to East Westphalia. “Steffen Baumgart has set himself a sporting monument here in Paderborn and has made a significant contribution to the success story of the club over many years. We respect his decision, which is now at the end of a long and serious weighing process and creates clarity for both sides,” said Sport- Managing director Fabian Wohlgemuth on the club’s own homepage.
“Respect means looking at that shit”
Anyone who has seen Baumgart on the sidelines knows that the emotional trainer will tackle the rest of the tasks with the same commitment as always, despite his SCP end: “I had and still have an incredibly exciting and intense time in Paderborn, in which we together were able to achieve remarkable success, “said the coach. “In the past few weeks I have come to the conclusion that it is now time for a change. Now I am fully focused on the end of the current season.”
Baumgart’s speech of rage remains in the memory for eternity after the game in the DFB Cup against Borussia Dortmund that was lost in February: The second division had made up a 2-0 deficit against the Champions League club in a dramatic way, to then through a controversial VAR decision to receive the 3-2 fatal blow. Erling Haaland was offside, but an SCP player is said to have touched the ball minimally before it was passed to the Norwegian. “Respect also means looking at the shit and then making a decision. That is respectful treatment of the opponent and not of the little ones who we kicked in the ass again,” Baumgart railed after the game.
The SCP is currently in eleventh place in the table. This is roughly on course for the season’s goal: The club started this season with the intention of acclimatizing itself to the 2nd Bundesliga and establishing itself among the top 30 teams in German professional football in the long term. Here, too, Baumgart could have laid the foundation for further Bundesliga history.
.