Led 2-0 at the start of the second half, Heidenheim overthrew Regensburg at the very end of the match on Sunday, to win 3-2, snatch second place and its first season in the Bundesliga, and force Hamburg into the play-off.
Second in the second division before the last day behind Darmstadt already promoted for a week, Heidenheim clinched their ticket to the first division in the ninth minute of added time thanks to Tim Kleindienst, to the chagrin of the Hamburg fans.
In Sandhausen, Hamburg won 1-0 and HSV fans took to the pitch, convinced that they had ended five seasons in purgatory, because at the end of their team’s game, Heidenheim were still trailing 2-1 .
But a penalty converted by Jan-Niklas Beste (90th 3), then the goal of Kleindienst (90 7) reversed the tight situation at the top of the classification. Heidenheim even finished second division champion since Darmstadt, demobilized, lost to Fürth (4-0).
Small town of less than 50,000 inhabitants in eastern Baden-Württemberg crossed by the Brenz (tributary of the Danube) on the border with Bavaria, Heidenheim will discover the joys of the first division, in its 15,000-seat stadium.
The club was founded in 1846 and played in two German Cup quarter-finals in 2015/16 (eliminated by Hertha Berlin) and 2018/19 (eliminated by Bayern Munich).
For Hamburg, we will now have to recover quickly from this emotional lift, with a first leg on Thursday evening (8:15 p.m.) on the lawn of Stuttgart, before a return match at home four days later at home.
Since the reintroduction of a play-off between the third in the second division and the sixteenth in the Bundesliga, only three clubs in the lower echelon have managed to come back: Nuremberg in 2009, Fortuna Düsseldorf in 2012 and Union Berlin in 2019.
Last season, after winning on the lawn of Hertha Berlin (1-0), Hamburg collapsed in the return match in front of the 57,000 spectators at the Volksparkstadion (2-0), missing the comeback during the dam.
