(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The clock is truly ticking for SV Hamburg - and will finally stop if one of the Bundesliga's biggest names is relegated for the first time. The northern Germans, the only member of the original Bundesliga line-up never to have been relegated, have slid to second-last in the table.
Even a victory over Schalke at home on the last day of the season might not now be enough to prevent relegation.
In the Volkspark arena, the huge stadium clock continues to show to the second how long Hamburg have been playing uninterrupted in the country's top league.
A proud reminder of the club's Bundesliga endurance, it has become something of a millstone for the current crop of players who appear unable to deal with pressure of yet another season battling to avoid the drop.
If results don't go the club's way on Saturday, the gaze will automatically turn to the stadium clock. At 51 years and 272 days, plus the hours and seconds up to the final whistle, Bundesliga time will have finally run out on Hamburg.
"Our position has drastically worsened," coach Bruno Labbadia said after a 2-1 defeat at fellow strugglers VfB Stuttgart Saturday.
"But we mustn't lose our nerve. We are now facing another final - the catch now being that we are depending on other teams."
Local media are agreed that relegation would be a disaster for both the club and the northern port city.
The club's golden era in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which it won the European Cup (1983), European Cup Winners' Cup (1977) and three (in 1979, 1982, 1983) of its six German league titles is long gone. The last domestic silverware was the German Cup in 1987.
However HSV, as they are known in Germany, are still among Europe's 20 largest clubs, according to Forbes, and has average home gates of more than 50,000, only behind Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich and Schalke.
That would all change if Hamburg find themselves next season in the second division.
The club underwent structural changes last summer by turning the professional division of the multi-sports club into a shareholder company.
With investment, among others from local transport billionaire Klaus-Michael Kuehne, the club had hoped to start turning around the ailing financial fortunes of the past decades.
Relegation though would be financially "catastrophic" for the club, which posted overall debts last year of almost 100 million euros, the local Hamburger Morgenpost said.
Leading players would have to leave to relieve a huge wage bill as the club attempts to plug losses of some 24 million euros (156 million dollars) in TV and sponsoring money alone on a budget which would shrink from 120 million to 75 million euros.
The city would lose much of the estimated 84 million euros a year it earns from Hamburg's top-flight football.
Not all is over though yet. Former Hamburg player Labbadia, appointed on April 15 as the club's fourth coach this season in a last act of desperation, has ordered the squad into a three-day training camp from Wednesday at Malente, the northern sport school once favoured by the German national team.
The "spirit of Malente" is a part of German footballing folklore, believed to have been one of the keys to West Germany's 1974 World Cup title on home soil.
If necessary Hamburg will gladly take the relegation/promotion play-off place, as the team did last season when they overcame Greuther Fuerth to stay up.
"We will fight to the last minute. We will be throwing body and soul into it," director Dietmar Beiersdorfer said.
The club would certainly have to lay off staff, the Morgenpost said. Even the club's mascot, Hermann the dinosaur, would be redundant. Along with the clock.
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