Goalkeeper Gerhard Tremmel spent a decade bouncing around the Bundesliga, often as a back-up. But a bold move and a bit of luck have seen him lead Premiership side Swansea City to a cup title.
As with so many February afternoons in London, Sunday was cold, damp and gray. But as afternoon turned to evening Gerhard Tremmel was wearing a smile as if he were on the beach in Tahiti. In a footballing sense, he was.
The goalkeeper had just led his club, Swansea City, to a win in the League Cup final - their first major trophy in a century of existence. He'd kept a clean sheet in an emphatic 5-0 win over Bradford City. And he'd done it in front of a crowd of more than 82,000 at Wembley.
Unlike the Bundesliga, the cup draw was kind to Tremmel
"I've played in a lot of big stadiums, but this one here you don't forget," said Tremmel. "It doesn't matter at all that it came against a fourth-division side - this was definitely the greatest moment of my career."
It's not as if there was much competition, to be honest. As long as you don't count his capture of the now-defunct German Futsal Cup in 2001 (and you shouldn't), Tremmel had never won a title prior to Sunday's triumph. In fact the Bundesliga was not particularly kind to Tremmel.
Early days
The Munich native's career had begun promisingly. He came up as a youth player with local side Unterhaching and took over between the posts toward the end of the 1999-2000 campaign, helping steer them to a solid, mid-table finish. The next season, Tremmel's first as an established starter, Unterhaching were relegated. Once in the second division, they went down another rung.
A rare outing with Hannover in a friendly: often Tremmel's gloves served merely to warm his hands
The next four seasons were spent at Hanover 96 and Hertha Berlin; neither ever made the keeper their undisputed starter. Tremmel then made a move to Energie Cottbus, where he finally did battle his way back into a starting job...only to see his club relegated, again.
In the summer of 2010, Tremmel's contract with Cottbus was up. Instead of fighting his way back into the Bundesliga by taking one of the many offers he had from big clubs (Bayern Munich, Cologne, Hamburg) to serve as a back-up, Tremmel made an odd choice. He went with the starting job at a footballing backwater - reigning Austrian champs Red Bull Salzburg.
Though Tremmel played well and led the club to a second-place finish and the best defensive record in the league, he now sees the move as a career misstep.
"Every morning when I woke up, I could look out on the Alps," Tremmel told the German football culture magazine 11Freunde. "The idea that I was there on vacation never really went away."
All change
Swansea, where Tremmel now plies his trade, is few people's idea of a holiday destination. It's one of Britain's rainiest cities, with over 200 wet days a year. And even the city's literary favorite son Dylan Thomas famously described it as an "ugly, lovely town."
Even the Swansea seaside manages to look bleak
But for Tremmel, Wales' second city has been a great place to jumpstart his career. An early-season injury to Swansea's starting keeper Michel Vorms thrust the German into the spotlight, where he shone. And while Vorms has won his place back in the league, Tremmel has become the club's designated cup-tie goalkeeper.
More importantly, the culture of the club has been a revelation. He says the team play like a cohesive unit on the pitch, never seeking to blame an individual for mistakes. He also praises the "casual" atmosphere between players and the fact there aren't factions or cliques in the squad. "It's done me an unbelieveable amount of good," says Tremmel.
The 34-year-old netminder still has a room with a view (an "excellent" one out his balcony, says the player), but this time it's not one of the grandeur of the Alps, but rather the more modest charms of the Bristol Channel.
Going their own way
Perhaps appropriately for the English top flight's only Welsh participant, little Swansea is in the Premiership, but not of it. England's league is known, above all, for two things: its highly commercialized climate off the pitch (mega-clubs paying big wages to a host of foreign stars and selling stacks of replica shirts in Asia) and the full-throated, if at times crude, football on it. Swansea offer neither.
Usually, it's Michael Laudrup lifting his lads
The club, first under manager Brendan Rodgers in its maiden Premiership season and now under Michael Laudrup, has become an outpost of possession-oriented, technically refined soccer - one which requires all eleven players to handle the ball confidently. That suits Tremmel fine, as he's happy to play with his feet as well as with his hands.
On the financial side, Swansea also bucks the Premiership trend. It's not got much money--like German clubs it's partially owned by its fans--and it enjoys a close relationship with the community. It didn't take long for Tremmel to find out just how close.
You see, Swansea practice on pitches the club shares with a municipal sports center, and the players also share locker room facilities with ordinary Jacks from the city. Turns out many of them wanted to wish him "good luck this weekend!" while he was in the shower.
"At first I thought, how did I end up here?" Tremmel told Spiegel. But during the fairytale run to the League Cup final, Tremmel was sure enough about his Swansea future to sign a contract extension through 2015. Now, he says, "my only regret is that I didn't try to get here sooner." DW DE
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