News: HSV promoted, relegated, Arda Turan

He has mercy. The football god. For seven years he had castigated the city of Hamburg and the people who support the local club. For seven years he had inexplicably taken out his frustration on HSV, twice battering them through relegation, four times letting them languish in fourth place. On Saturday evening he had calmed down. The anger had dissipated. Merlin Polzin's team beat SSV Ulm 6-1 and is finally returning to the Bundesliga. And the pictures and stories after the game showed just how much HSV has been missing from the 1. Bundesliga in recent years. The pitch in the Volksparkstadion became a place of pilgrimage, fans carried the players on their shoulders as if they were saints, the mischievous Merlin Polizin was showered in a rain of beer. Hamburg's press spokesman Philipp Langer delivered a sermon to the young coach . Colleague Mia Guethe, an HSV fan with a penchant for grand gestures, wrote a beautiful text: "The power of this moment has grown out of the failures of recent years." And sometimes everything just happens at once. Fifteen hours later, the HSV women's team was promoted to the Bundesliga. The people of Hamburg hadn't loved each other this much in a long time.