Let the champagne flow

The time has come to celebrate the fantastic season for 1.FCN -  the performance of the team as a whole and the leadership of coach, Dieter Hecking. The combination of exciting, attacking football, excellent results and the transformation of several players into highly desirable targets for other clubs, is a long way from  most things that have happened at Der Club since the 2007 Cup Final victory.

With four games still remaining in the Bundesliga season, some may consider this post to be four weeks premature. Unthinkable defeat in each of those four games would indeed take the edge off the ecstasy felt by the fans, but now is the right time to celebrate because the remaining games threaten to be overshadowed by hopes and fears as Nuremberg fight for Europa League qualification.

At the beginning of the season, there were few Clubberer who would have been dissatisified with a mid-table position come May. They would have settled for the last four games being little more than drab end-of-season affairs, with nothing to gain, nothing to lose. Mid-table mediocrity would have made a pleasant change after the previous three seasons - an unsuccesful relegation battle, followed by a promotion via the play-offs, and then another brush with relegation, eventually only avoided as a result of a second consecutive play-off victory. Certainly as the Bundesliga paused for the winter break with 1.FCN still having plenty to do to avoid being sucked into the turmoil at the bottom of the table, even a fourteenth place finish would have been welcome.

But Hecking had started building something special long before Christmas. Ilkay Gundogan was attracting attention from the Bundesliga and beyond, as were the on-loan Julian Schieber and on-loan Mehmet Ekici. Attractive passing, attacking football  rapidly became the signature of Hecking's team, and young players were entrusted with several games to bed-in and make their mark.

Surely if Der Club can hold on to six or seven from a growing list of accomplished performers including the aforementioned Gundogan, Schieber and Ekici plus Jens Hegeler, Phillip Wollscheid, Timothy Chandler, Almog Cohen, Andy Wolf, Raphael Schaefer, Timmy Simons and Javier Pinola, then next season could be equally as good, and fans will expect it to be.

This season, a mid-table finish is now unlikley to be achieved, to the obvious joy of all involved. But this joy should come with a health warning. The final games will not be calm affairs. The fans, and surely the players too, will have their nerves placed on a knife edge as every goal for and against will either add a new twist in the quest for European competition, or twist the knife into a faltering campaign. These games will not be for the faint-hearted and results from other fixtures will probably be just as significant as those for 1.FCN. As each game plays out in front of our eyes, it will be hard for us as supporters to remember the previous eight months or so. Each moment of each game will indicate triumph or disaster with hearts firmly set on fifth place.

So now is the time to reflect on what has been achieved at 1.FCN this season. There may be more to come and anyone watching can be forgiven for wanting this now. However, all Clubberer should be more than happy with what Dieter Hecking has built so far, irrespective of what happens in the nerve-wracking finale. And soon we might not only be considering which on-field talents we want Der Club to hold onto for the foreseeable future. Hecking has also considerably raised his own profile and done so to the point at which he is clearly as important to the future of 1.FCN as any other individual. Europa League football would be a fitting tribute to what he has achieved already but let's also be happy that we're in a battle at the right end of the Bundesliga, and that it looks like it might become a more regular occurence.