Such has been Frank Schmidt’s longevity in charge of FC Heidenheim that already in this season’s Conference League Chelsea have flirted with blooding a player with fewer years on Earth than he has in the job.
Schmidt, a former player at German football’s miracle club, took the helm in September 2007, a month before Shim Mheuka, the teenage forward who made Chelsea’s bench at Panathinaikos in October, was even born.
He was, at the time and still, only the second manager in the club’s history. No one has ever stayed at the helm of a German side for longer.
The glamour group stage tie in this, Heidenheim’s first European season, offers a moment to consider one of the continent’s most remarkable footballing rises, from the depths of the German pyramid less than two decades ago.
Though its roots as a sports club stretch back to the mid-19th century, Heidenheim in this iteration - through a complex trail of mergers and breakaways - has existed only since 2007. Then, it was a fifth-tier outfit, an even lowlier standard than that sounds, since German football spreads thin into a network of regional Oberligas at that level.
But under Schmidt’s guidance, a steady stream of organically-driven promotions have graced the town of 50,000, an antidote to the Red Bull-fuelled surge of RB Leipzig, who finished second to Heidenheim on goal-difference in the third tier a decade ago.
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You may not recall the details, but an extraordinary finale to the Bundesliga 2 season in 2022/23 brought Heidenheim’s story to wider acclaim.
Heading into their final match, Schmidt’s side needed only to beat already-relegated Jahn Regensburg to clinch promotion at the expense of giants Hamburg. In stoppage time, though, they trailed 2-1 and Hamburg’s fans and players were already on the pitch celebrating after their 1-0 win at Sandhausen. Eventual news of two late Heidenheim goals - in the 93rd and 99th minutes - did not go down well.
Last season, the club’s first ever in Germany’s top-flight, continued the fairytale, a 3-2 win from 2-0 down against Bayern Munich the highlight of a league campaign that brought an eighth-placed finish and qualification for Europe.
The second season has so far been more complex. Heidenheim are 15th, only two points above the relegation playoff place, winless in six league games and already out of the German Cup. Schmidt admits that the novelty of his team’s midweek commitments has made it hard to find time to drill his players tactically in the same way as before.
In the Conference League, though, they have been faultless, like Chelsea winning three out of three, to leave Schmidt embracing Thursday night’s clash.
“If this was the first game at this level, then maybe it’d be an issue,” he told Bundesliga.com. "But we’ve already played against Borussia Dortmund, against Bayern Munich – even come from behind to beat them. It’s not an issue.
“I think only because we’ve always managed in recent years to believe in the chance and to give our all to reach the next step is why we’ve ultimately done so. And getting too caught up in romanticism, David vs. Goliath, the unimaginable, that won’t help us in the game.
“At the end of the day, this game is also 11 against 11, and the team that does their job will win.”
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