Here comes a big week for high-flying Union Berlin

Here comes a big week for high-flying Union Berlin

In the Bundesliga there is a three-way tie at the top of the table with champions Bayern Munich on 43 points alongside Borussia Dortmund and upstarts Union Berlin.

Bayern host Union this Sunday when the side from the German capital will look to extend their fairy-tale rise. It is the first time Union have led the log in a top-flight league since 1970, when they topped the table in the DDR-Oberliga which at that stage represented the peak of then East Germany's footballing pyramid.

Founded in 1906, the club reached the German Championship final in 1923 and soon after the end of World War II, they won the Berlin Cup in 1946-47. But when the country was divided up, Union began to plummet downwards once more and had dropped to the third tier of East German football when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.

They won the East German Cup in 1968, but the following two decades that preceded German reunification in 1989 saw the club settle into a pattern of flitting up and down the country's lower divisions. In 2001 third-tier Union contested the German Cup final and, although they lost the showpiece to Schalke, it was enough to earn a spot in the UEFA Cup for the first time in their history.

The boom was short-lived though and they suffered back-to-back relegations in 2004 and 2005 before a return to the second tier in 2009. They finally gained Bundesliga promotion in 2019. A seventh-place finish in their second Bundesliga season resulted in a Europa Conference League campaign and they bettered that the following year by finishing fifth and booking a spot in the Europa League.

This Thursday Union, coached by Urs Fischer, take on Ajax Amsterdam in the second leg of a playoff tie after drawing 0-0 in the Netherlands last week and then comes the trip to Bayern on Sunday.

Die Eisernen - a century-old nickname that stems from their kit resembling the uniforms worn by metalworkers in local factories - have kicked off 2023 with eight wins and two draws from 10 games and will have high hopes of a massive away win this weekend.