Die-hard football fans will never forget this scene. Thirty years ago, Borussia Dortmund just didn’t lose 19 games in a row and is close to the championship. Then a young man from Nuremberg takes off in the BVB penalty area – and the season takes a dramatic turn.
“An absolute king of swallows, this Wück. I’ll go insane if this left thing costs us the championship.” Dortmund’s Günter Kutowski still didn’t want to calm down half an hour after the end of the game. Minutes earlier he had kicked the cabin door – and then cried. They were angry tears. Weeks later, Kutowski’s foreboding was finally to be confirmed. After this 31st match day of the 1991/92 season, BVB slipped down to third place. At the end of the season, Dortmund finally lost the championship race in a dramatic finish. In the end, BVB were missing a few goals – or just that one point.
ZDF reporter Rolf Töpperwien, in his TV summary of this memorable scene in the 11th minute of the game between 1. FC Nürnberg and Borussia Dortmund in April thirty years ago, didn’t talk too much about it: “That was a swallow!” And millions of football fans at home on the screens were angry. The club’s young star, Christian Wück, ran a further one or two meters in the Dortmund penalty area after a tackle by BVB defender Günter Kutowski, until he suddenly lost his footing and quickly sought ground contact. Great marks for posture, no question, but also grossly unsportsmanlike, as Christian Wück admitted after the game, unusually open-hearted: “I could have kept running. Suddenly I was lying there.”
The “weak” (“Kicker”) referee Hans-Jürgen Kasper from Katlenburg made “three serious wrong decisions” that evening. Afterwards, however, he had to answer for his first faux pas. And while the images were unequivocal, he denied making a mistake. After all, he admitted: “Admittedly, Wück dropped theatrically.”
Buchwald triggers hangovers
But that was of no use to BVB, who had previously remained unbeaten in 19 games and traveled to Franconia as a hopeful leader of the table. Due to the relatively early deficit – the Argentinian Sergio Zarate had safely converted the due penalty to give the club a 1-0 lead – the team initially lost their step and conceded a 2-1 lead in the end, despite a very strong second half -Loss that hurt, as Michael Zorc admitted afterwards: “Losing is bitter. But a swallow makes it even worse.”
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary anecdote treasure chest. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Mondays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) is available on his website www.scudetto.de.
However, the then 18-year-old Christian Wück didn’t want to know that he had steered the season in a different direction with his “left thing”. Almost defiantly, he spoke to the TV cameras: “I don’t decide the championship, but the clubs themselves.” Of course, he was basically right about that. But for Dortmund it felt very different at that moment. Although they were tied at the top of the table with Eintracht Frankfurt and VfB Stuttgart and they were only behind their two rivals because of the worse goal difference, they felt they had been cheated of more than just one possible point. Michael Zorc: “It was psychologically so important to be top of the table.”
Finally, after 38 matchdays – for the first time twenty teams competed in the first Bundesliga – the season for BVB should also end dramatically. A few minutes before the end, Stuttgart’s Guido Buchwald (“Maybe I’ve become a bit immortal today”) headed into the opponent’s goal in the last game of the season at Bayer Leverkusen. And while the VfB fans were cheering, there was a hangover in Frankfurt and Dortmund. Only the goal difference allowed BVB to remain in second place despite a simultaneous win in Duisburg. Exactly as Dortmund had feared after the swallow from Nuremberg.
Three years later, BVB benefits from a swallow
The finish for Eintracht Frankfurt was even more dramatic – and again a referee was involved. Eintracht had led the table for four games in a row before they went to Rostock for the last game of the season. And there referee Alfons Berg made an even bigger buck than his colleague Hans-Jürgen Kasper had done a few weeks earlier in Nuremberg. After Berg had watched the controversial scene on television afterwards, he said ruefully: “It was a clear penalty, I feel sorry for Eintracht.” However, that came too late for Frankfurt.
By the way: almost exactly three years to the day after Nuremberg’s Wück swallowed, Dortmund benefited in the fight for the championship from an even more unsportsmanlike offense by one of their own men. It was Andreas Möller who flew his famous “Protective Swallow” in the BVB game against Karlsruher SC on match day 26 of the 1994/95 season.
His opponent Dirk Schuster was meters away at the time – but referee Habermann pointed to the penalty spot. Afterwards, KSC professional Dirk Schuster spoke a legendary sentence: “As a swallow, I would refuse to be compared to Möller.” Günter Kutowski could probably have said the same thing about Christian Wück three years earlier.
