Beyond 90 Minutes

At Union Berlin, a stadium is not simply where supporters watch football. It is proof of what can happen when a club still belongs to the people who refuse to let it disappear.

There are plenty of ways to build a football stadium now. You can hire an architecture firm, announce a naming-rights partner, release a cinematic video of a glass façade, and invite executives to talk about premium hospitality. Modern football has made this process very efficient. It knows how to create venues that look impressive from the air and expensive from every angle.

Union Berlin did something rather different.

When the Stadion An der Alten Försterei needed rebuilding in 2008, more than 2,300 Union supporters volunteered around 140,000 hours of work. They did not buy the stadium in the simplistic sense. They helped build it with their time, their labour and, throughout the club’s difficult history, their willingness to give when there was little reason to expect anything back.

That is why An der Alten Försterei matters. Not because it is the biggest stadium in Berlin, or the newest, or the most commercially polished. It matters because its terraces carry a rare kind of evidence: the people who stand there helped make sure there was still something to stand in.

And that leaves Union Berlin with a question more interesting than the usual football story about promotion, survival or European nights: 

Can a club grow without turning the people who built it into customers?

An der Alten Försterei sits in Köpenick, in south-east Berlin, far from the capital’s postcard version of itself. Its name comes from the old forester’s house nearby, which still gives the place a strange sense of having grown out of the land rather than being placed upon it.

Union’s relationship with Berlin has always been different from the more polished image of the city. The club came from the eastern half, lived through the peculiar constraints of the GDR, and developed a stubborn identity that was less about trophies than survival. There are bigger clubs, richer clubs, and more fashionable clubs in Germany. But Union has long understood something that football occasionally forgets: being meaningful to people is not the same as being successful in the conventional sense.

That meaning was tested repeatedly. In 2004, when Union faced another financial crisis, supporters launched the 

 campaign. Fans donated blood to hospitals and gave the compensation they received back to the club. It is one of those stories that sounds almost too symbolic to be true, which is perhaps why it captures Union so well. The club was not kept alive by a distant benefactor arriving with a cheque. Its supporters gave something of themselves because they believed the club belonged to them.

Four years later, the stadium became the next emergency.

The old terraces were in poor condition, and the club risked losing its licence if it could not make the ground fit for purpose. Union needed a rebuild. What it had, beyond money, was a community willing to work.

It is easy to make this sound romantic. A working-class club, loyal supporters, old terraces, everyone united by football. But the truth is more practical and, because of that, more meaningful.

Stadiums are not saved by feelings alone. They require planning, materials, engineers, permits, safety standards and money. They require people willing to spend weekends doing work that will not put their names on a shirt or turn them into heroes. The supporter-led rebuild of An der Alten Försterei mattered because it converted affection into responsibility.

That is the difference between saying “this is our club” and proving it.

More than 2,300 volunteers contributed to the renovation between 2008 and 2009. Together, they gave around 140,000 working hours. When the rebuilt stadium reopened, it was not simply a better venue. It was a home that had been returned to the people who feared losing it.

Football loves the phrase “the twelfth man,” usually as a convenient compliment for a loud crowd. Union Berlin makes the phrase feel insufficient. Their supporters were not only behind the team. They were part of the club’s infrastructure.

There is a reason the stadium still feels different. An der Alten Försterei remains overwhelmingly a standing ground, with 18,395 standing places and only 3,617 seats within its current capacity of 22,012. That detail is not merely about nostalgia. Standing changes the social experience of football. It is harder to watch the match as an isolated consumer when you are part of a crowd that sings, moves, complains, celebrates and remembers together.

The atmosphere is not designed. It is inherited.

Football Without the Customer Service Voice

Most major clubs now speak to supporters in the language of a consumer brand. They offer experiences, memberships, access, content, packages and loyalty programmes. None of those things are automatically bad. Football clubs need money, and supporters deserve decent facilities, safe grounds and professional organisation.

But the language reveals something. It can make the supporter feel like the club’s most valuable customer rather than one of its owners in the emotional sense.

Union’s culture has resisted that idea because its people have repeatedly been asked to do more than buy a ticket. They have donated blood. They have rebuilt terraces. They have bought shares in the stadium operating company. In 2011, Union created that company to give members and sponsors the opportunity to own a stake in the stadium. A further share release in 2024 extended that relationship to a much larger Union community.

This does not mean Union has found a perfect alternative to modern football. No club can survive outside economics, and no member-led structure eliminates disagreement or difficult decisions. But it does give the club a different starting point. When Union talks about community, it is not asking supporters to feel involved. It is acknowledging that they already are.

That is a much more demanding form of belonging.

The most difficult moment in a football story usually comes after the club gets what it wanted.

Union reached the Bundesliga for the first time in 2019. Then came European football, and eventually the Champions League. The club that had spent decades on the margins of German football was suddenly visible to everyone. Its membership grew. Its women’s team began drawing remarkable crowds of its own. The stadium, once threatened by decay, is now too small for the ambition and demand around it.

Union plans to expand An der Alten Försterei, with the first phase intended to create capacity for 37,500 people. The club has also acquired the stadium grounds, securing a level of control that would have once seemed distant.

This is good news. A club should not be trapped inside its own romantic mythology. Union supporters deserve a team capable of competing, facilities worthy of the club’s growth, and a stadium that can welcome more people into its community. Success should not belong only to clubs that were born wealthy.

Yet expansion always brings a risk. More capacity can mean more seats, more commercial areas, more expensive matchdays and a more carefully controlled version of the experience that made people fall in love with the place. A club can improve the building and accidentally weaken the culture inside it.

That is why Union’s future is more compelling than a simple stadium-development story. The question is not whether the new An der Alten Försterei will be modern. It has to be. The question is whether it will still recognise the people who carried the old one through its most difficult years.

Will the supporter who helped rebuild the terraces still feel at home in the next version of the stadium? Will the club continue to value standing room, affordability and the disorderly collective life of football? Or will success slowly turn belonging into another product to be sold back to its own people?

These are not questions unique to Union Berlin. They sit underneath almost every modern football project, from new stadiums in England to investor-led clubs in Italy, Spain and beyond. The difference is that Union cannot pretend not to know what is at stake.

Its supporters built the evidence into the ground.

Perhaps that is the real beauty of the Union Berlin story. It is not that supporters rebuilt a stadium and then preserved it forever behind glass. A football club cannot live like a museum. It has to change, make difficult choices and occasionally become bigger than the people who first carried it.

The challenge is remembering where that growth came from.

An der Alten Försterei was opened in 1920. It has been altered many times since. Its floodlights came later, its terraces were rebuilt, its main stand was added, and another expansion now waits ahead. But its most important reconstruction was not architectural. It was moral.

In 2008, Union Berlin’s supporters showed that a stadium could still be more than an asset on a balance sheet. They showed that football’s loudest claim that clubs belong to their people could mean something practical.

A modern stadium can be bought, branded and opened with fireworks. A home has to be built more slowly.

Sometimes, by the people who refuse to let it disappear.

Union Berlin’s official stadium history

BBC Sport’s reporting on the supporter-led rebuild and club culture

140,000 Hours of Belonging: How Union Berlin’s Supporters Rebuilt Their Stadium and Kept Their Club Feeling Like Home

I have to start by congratulating Manchester United. After two seasons away, they are finally back in the Champions League, and there was something familiar about seeing Old Trafford under European lights again. Their opening night went exactly as their supporters would have wanted: four goals, a clean sheet, and a comfortable 4–0 victory. [1]

But while most of the attention naturally went to United, I found myself looking at the other name on the fixture.

At first, I assumed they were simply one of those clubs you occasionally discover through European competition, a champion from a league I rarely follow who somehow survives the qualifying rounds before appearing on the television against one of Europe's giants. Then I looked them up and found one detail that immediately changed the question.

When Manchester United lifted the Europa League trophy in Stockholm in May of that year, Sabah FK did not yet exist. Nine years later, the same club were walking onto the pitch at Old Trafford in the Champions League. UEFA describes Sabah as the youngest club ever to reach the competition's league phase or group stage. [2]

not existing to the Champions League in nine years?

My first assumption was probably the obvious one. There must be a rich owner behind it. Modern football has given us enough examples of ambitious investors buying clubs, injecting money, recruiting aggressively and accelerating their way up the football pyramid that this almost feels like the default explanation. Sabah's founder, I soon discovered, was Yagub Huseynov, an Azerbaijani entrepreneur whose Bridge Group operates across areas including architecture, construction and real estate. Bridge itself identifies Huseynov as the founder of the group and the owner and chairman associated with Sabah. [3]

So perhaps that was it. A wealthy businessman wanted a football club, funded one properly, and success eventually followed.

Except the more I read, the less that explanation seemed sufficient.

Because before there was Sabah, there was 

Before Sabah, there was another club name

Sabah's official history dates the club's creation to 

. Azerbaijan's published corporate records support that date: Sabah Futbol Klubu LLC was registered on 8 September with initial charter capital of AZN 10,000. [4]

Yet three weeks earlier, on 17 August, Azerbaijani football media were already reporting on a new First Division project called 

. Former Neftçi coach Arif Asadov had been appointed to lead it, and he described its central policy as developing promising young Azerbaijani footballers. The same contemporary report stated that the team's expenses would be covered by the Ministry of Education and reported that then-Education Minister Mikayil Jabbarov had given a specific instruction connected to the project. The latter point is contemporary journalism rather than an official Ministry document, so I would treat it as a reported claim rather than definitive evidence of exactly who made the original decision. [5]

Then the chronology becomes particularly interesting. Sabah FC LLC was legally registered on 8 September, but later that month the team preparing for the First Division was still being called Vətən. On 

, Qol.az reported that Vətən had officially changed its name to Sabah. [6]

This was the point where my original question began to change. Sabah had clearly been founded as a new legal entity, but its sporting story did not appear to begin from a completely empty page.

That trail led me back to the Vətən Football School.

The problem Sabah was apparently created to solve

Sabah's own academy today states that it was established on the basis of the 

. The club says its academy was formally created in 2018 from that existing foundation. [7]

The most revealing explanation, however, comes from Sabah president Maqsud Adigozalov in a long interview published in 2022. His account of the club's creation is far less glamorous than the usual football-owner narrative, but to me it is much more interesting. Adigozalov said that when the people behind Sabah entered football, Vətən was already developing young players. The problem was what happened afterward: some youngsters reached a certain age, could not find a senior team, and effectively saw their football development come to an end. According to him, the decision was therefore made to create a club in the First Division where those players would have somewhere to continue playing. [8]

As someone who works in product development, I found myself looking at this almost like a product problem. The system already had an upstream capability: it could identify and develop young footballers. What it lacked was the next stage of the journey. The academy could produce talent, but without a professional pathway the process was incomplete.

Sabah, according to its president's account, was created to fill that gap.

That does not mean the story should be simplified into “Vətən became Sabah.” Sabah's academy itself says it was later built on Vətən's base, while contemporary reporting says that the First Division side originally carrying the Vətən name was renamed Sabah. Those facts show clear sporting continuity, but they do not by themselves explain every legal, financial or ownership arrangement behind the transition. [6][7]

And this is where Huseynov becomes important again.

 when the club announced its Supervisory Board in April 2018. The same announcement said Sabah wanted to build the club on a “healthy foundation” and that the board would help shape development strategy, establish business relationships and attract sponsors and investors. [9]

By July 2018, Report.az also identified Huseynov as Sabah's founder. Contemporary reporting around that period described Bridge Group as the club's principal private financial force, while AFFA also contributed support. [10]

There is an important line I do not want to cross here. I have found reliable evidence that Huseynov is an established entrepreneur, investor and real-estate developer. I have 

 found reliable evidence that he is a billionaire, despite how easily that word can attach itself to modern football ownership stories. Nor have I found evidence showing that Sabah was created primarily as a real-estate play, a marketing vehicle for Bridge, or a property-development strategy. Huseynov's business background makes those questions reasonable to investigate, but a reasonable hypothesis is still not evidence. [3]

 documented is that private capital sat alongside unusually visible links to Azerbaijan's public education structure.

Look at Sabah's first Supervisory Board and one name immediately stands out.

Alongside Huseynov were former Azerbaijan international Igor Ponomaryov, businessman Rauf Khalilov, media executive Rahman Hajiyev and 

Firudin Gurbanov, then Deputy Minister of Education of Azerbaijan

. Bridge Group published that composition itself. [9]

That does not make Sabah a state-owned club, and I have found no credible evidence that the Azerbaijani government secretly owned it. But it does make it difficult to portray Sabah's beginnings as an entirely private venture detached from public institutions.

The connection becomes even clearer when looking at AFFA's explanation during Sabah's first promotion process. Sabah finished only 

 in its first season in the First Division. The club nevertheless received a Premier League licence for 2018/19, while eight other applicants were denied one. AFFA's official licensing decision confirms both Sabah's licence and the rejected applications. [11]

That fact alone could easily produce a sensational story: a new club with government-linked figures around it finishes fifth and gets promoted.

But the evidence deserves more patience than that.

Adigozalov later said Sabah had originally planned to spend two or three seasons in the First Division and hoped to earn promotion by finishing first. According to him, the clubs above Sabah were unable to obtain the necessary licences, AFFA offered Sabah the vacant opportunity, and the club accepted it. [8]

AFFA secretary-general Elkhan Mammadov was questioned directly about Sabah in May 2018. He defended the licensing process in institutional terms, arguing that clubs needed proper documents, infrastructure, financial planning and strategic continuity rather than simply sporting results. More significantly, when asked who would financially support Sabah, he said that support could come from the Ministry of Education or another institution and stated that bank guarantees had already been approved from the Ministry's budget. [12]

That is a substantial piece of evidence, but it still needs to be described carefully.

public institutional support was part of Sabah's early environment

. It does not, by itself, prove that Sabah was created as a political instrument.

This was one of the questions I had when I started researching, especially once government officials began appearing in the story. Mikayil Jabbarov was Azerbaijan's Education Minister from April 2013 until December 2017, meaning his tenure covered both the period in which Vətən's football activities were developing and the months in which Sabah appeared. [13]

But this is exactly where I think football writing has to resist the temptation to make a story more dramatic than the evidence allows.

I can document a Ministry-linked football school. I can document contemporary reporting connecting the Education Ministry to the Vətən First Division project. I can document a Deputy Education Minister sitting on Sabah's Supervisory Board. I can document AFFA's secretary-general referring to Ministry-approved bank guarantees. I can document Huseynov and Bridge Group as Sabah's founder and major private financial backer. [5][9][12]

What I cannot document is a political motive behind the club's creation.

I have found no evidence that Sabah was secretly owned by Jabbarov, created as a government propaganda project, or established to serve some identifiable political objective. Similarly, I have found no evidence that Huseynov's real-estate interests were the hidden purpose of the club.

Maybe further research will uncover something more. For now, the evidence points somewhere more nuanced.

: an existing youth-development structure supplied part of the sporting foundation; the education system was materially involved around that environment; private capital from Huseynov and Bridge Group helped create and finance a professional organisation; and AFFA supplied the licensing and competition framework within which that organisation could move rapidly into the top division. [7][8][9][12]

To me, that is actually more interesting than discovering another billionaire's football club.

And then I learned what “Sabah” means

There is one part of Adigozalov's interview that stayed with me long after all the governance structures, corporate records and licensing documents.

. But according to Adigozalov, football made that awkward. Defeat is unavoidable, and nobody wanted to read headlines effectively saying that “the homeland lost” or “the homeland was destroyed.” So they looked for another name. The young footballers they were developing needed a future, he explained, and they chose 

It is almost too perfect a football story.

A youth system was developing players but could not always give them a professional future. A club was created to extend that pathway, and they called it 

The romantic in me immediately loves that explanation. The researcher in me also knows that it comes from the club president speaking five years after Sabah's creation, so it should remain what it is: valuable first-hand testimony rather than unquestionable historical truth.

I increasingly think those two instincts are what I enjoy most about researching football. The game gives us stories that invite romance, but the deeper you look, the more complicated they usually become.

That is probably the biggest thing my original question got wrong.

Sabah FK really is extraordinarily young. Its company was incorporated in September 2017. Its first season was played in the First Division. It reached the Premier League the following year, eventually won Azerbaijan's domestic double in 2025/26, and in 2026 became the youngest club ever to reach the Champions League league phase or group stage. [2][4]

But “founded in 2017” does not necessarily mean “built from nothing in 2017.”

Underneath the nine-year-old club were older institutions, an existing football-development programme and relationships that predated the badge itself. On top of those foundations came private investment, professional management and a structure capable of satisfying requirements that several of its competitors could not.

There are still parts of the story I cannot answer. I have not found a definitive document telling me 

who first proposed creating the professional club

, precisely when Huseynov became involved, what the earliest agreement between Bridge, Vətən and the Education Ministry looked like, or who the original beneficial shareholder of Sabah FC LLC was when it was incorporated. The published corporate record identifies the legal entity, representative, address, capital and registration date, but not the original beneficial ownership. [4]

I would rather leave those questions open than manufacture certainty just to give the article a cleaner ending.

Because maybe the interesting conclusion is already sitting in front of us.

 beside Manchester United on the Champions League fixture list, I wondered how a football club could possibly go from nothing to Old Trafford in nine years.

After digging into the story, I am no longer sure that “nothing” is the right word. Sabah FK was officially born in 2017. But its story had already begun. And rather beautifully, the club they eventually created was given a name that looked not towards its past, but towards what came next.

Como enjoy dream Champions League debut, big wins for Man Utd and Bayern Munich.

 Manchester United defeated Sabah 4–0 on their return to the Champions League after a two-season absence.

Different roads, same dream: How Sabah and coach Dambrauskas reached the Champions League.

 UEFA identifies Sabah as the youngest club to reach the Champions League league phase or group stage. 

 Corporate biography identifying Huseynov as Bridge Group founder, entrepreneur, investor and real-estate developer, and as owner/chairman associated with Sabah. 

. Records registration on 8 September 2017 with initial charter capital of AZN 10,000.

 (2017). Contemporary report on Arif Asadov's appointment to the new Vətən First Division project and its youth-development policy. 

 Contemporary report that Vətən was renamed Sabah. 

 The club states that the Sabah Football Academy was established on the base of Vətən Football School. 

 (2022, December 2). Interview with Sabah president Maqsud Adigozalov, discussing Vətən, the motivation for creating the professional club, the choice of the Sabah name and the unexpected promotion opportunity. 

Sabah Football Club has announced the creation of the club's Supervisory Board.

 Identifies Huseynov as founder and Deputy Education Minister Firudin Gurbanov as a board member. 

 (2018). Contemporary report identifying Yagub Huseynov as Sabah's founder. 

 Official licensing decision granting Sabah a Premier League licence while denying licences to eight other applicants. 

 (2018, May 11). Interview with AFFA secretary-general Elkhan Mammadov discussing Sabah's institutional foundations, financing and Ministry-approved bank guarantees. 

[13] President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

 Presidential records documenting Mikayil Jabbarov's appointment as Education Minister in April 2013 and dismissal from that position in December 2017.

Posts in Beyond 90 Minutes

140,000 Hours of Belonging: How Union Berlin’s Supporters Rebuilt Their Stadium and Kept Their Club Feeling Like Home

The Strange Origin Story Behind Europe’s Youngest Champions League Club: Sabah FK