Arminia Bielefeld boss credits hard work for their promotion

Bielefeld also became the fourth club from the third tier to reach the final of the DFB Cup after Union Berlin, Energie Cottbus and Hertha Berlin II, losing to VfB Stuttgart.

Speaking to SABC Sport, Wortmann believes their behind the scenes strategies were evident on the field.

"For us, it was huge, it was the most important thing to be promoted, to be back again in the second Bundesliga. In the third division, it's not so easy to earn money and it's a hard and tough business in the third division,” Wortmann said.

“We are very happy to be back, we did it with a very, very young team, hungry team, so we developed young players from the fourth division, to third division, now they can play in the second division and it's good to see that hard work, team spirit and discipline has an impact."

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Four of former Bafana Bafana players have played for Bielefeld, namely, Siyabonga Nkosi, Delron Buckley, Sibusiso Zuma and Rowen Fernandez.

This pushed the Bundesliga side to invest in grassroots football in SA through different academies where they host coaching clinics and also training for coaches.

Wortmann says this partnership is very important for them in giving back to the country.

"We've been here since 2021, in the biggest world crisis in Corona, we started here. It runs very well, in the end it's the same story. We are not Bayern Munich, the big brand but we believe that 'Don't be too big to do the small things',” he added.

“So, we can go to the townships, to the kids, we want to develop kids but the people must trust us, that's always a long way, that's hard work. The people asked in Germany if we should go further in South Africa because we have an investment and I said yes because we didn't want to stay in the third division, we wanted to be back in the second one. 

“This was for me the right decision, even when in the third division we didn't have money to stay here and work here in South Africa. It's always important to have an authentic story and this is what we have because we had the players from South Africa, a lot of them in the past."