Steffen Baumgart speaks on continued success with Union Berlin super subs: “That’s our collective!” | OneFootball

Union Berlin head coach Steffen Baumgart now unquestionably has his “Midas Touch” working at the moment. In the first game back from the Bundesliga winter break, Baumgart has kept an impressive streak from the 2025 calendar year alive. Namely, bringing on the right substitutes to score goals. 

In a 3-1 win over RB Leipzig on matchday 14, Baumgart subs Christopher Trimmel (assist), Andrej Ilic (assist), and Tim Skarke (goal) lifted Union from a 1-1 deadlock with their heavily favored guests to a massive upset win. An 0-1 away win on matchday 15 came thanks to late Baumgart introduction Andras Schäfer. 

Baumgart subs Woo Yeong-Jeong and Marin Ljubicic enabled Union to nick a draw of Mainz 05 in this weekend’s matchday 16 encounter. Generally speaking, an occurrence that happens three times in a row means that luck and coincidence play less of a role than one might think.

Does Baumgart have a true “Midas Touch”?

Naturally, luck and coincidence always play a role no matter what. It is nevertheless worth noting that Skarke, Jeong, Schäfer, and Ljubicic all scored their first and only goals of the season in these last three matches. Jeong and Ljubicic have played very poorly in the last two campaigns and are widely regarded as massive transfer flops.

Skarke and Schäfer only started twice respectively this season. Jeong was given a longer starting audition, but benched after the last four matches. Ljubicic (who was a bit lucky to be credited with the 2-2) didn’t even log a single minute of action prior to this weekend. Clearly, Baumgart is finding a way to breathe life into either underutilized or outright forgotten players. 

There’s also a tactical tweak involved. Baumgart finally got Union out of head coach Urs Fischer’s ultra-defensive 3-3-2-2 formation (something that took multiple years and multiple coaches to do) and re-formatted the team into a more attack-minded 3-4-3. Lately, he’s been switching to a 4-3-3 late in matches for some extra late pop. 

This, too, is clearly working.  Baumgart himself mentioned the role of the subs on three separate occasions during  the post-match press conference. One eagerly anticipates what Baumgart’s next match plan has in store for his back-benchers. 

What Baumgart says on the matter:

“We know that, as a team, we’re all about the collective and not about the starting XI,” Baumgart remarked at the post-match press conference. “That shows you the morale and the mentality of the team. I found the two goals very nicely played. I’m glad that we got another decisive goal from the collective.

“I repeat, it’s about the lads that come in and not about the starting XI,” Baumgart said later in response to a separate question. “It shows you how important the lads on the back of the bench are. They bring a lot of quality into the match.

“It’s so important that are starters work hard for us,” Baumgart responded to a third question. “Then our subs come on and give 100 percent. That’s our collective. It’s different than it was at the beginning of the season and that’s precisely what we want to see.“

GGFN | Peter Weis