His exit, iFollow and Germans in Owls shirts: Julian Börner’s love for Sheffield Wednesday lives on

“Come on, let’s talk!” he roars in an unmistakable German accent. “Sheffield Wednesday, let’s go!”

The interview was conducted a few weeks ago in what were rosier times as far as the Owls automatic promotion effort is concerned. Listening back to the tape, it’s clear their dip to third place will have hit him hard, albeit from afar.

It’s some 17 months since Börner left Wednesday to return to Germany with Hannover 96, a second tier outfit for whom he is a near ever-present. He is the club’s vice-captain and is a popular figure with supporters despite what has been an up-and-down season.

A bubbly character who remains something of a cult figure for Owls supporters, the centre-half left behind 70 appearances and the heartbreak of relegation from the Championship, but retained his love for a club and fan base that he can’t help but smile thinking about throughout a 45-minute Zoom call with The Star.

“After three or four games when they sang my song for the first time I had goosebumps and I will always remember that feeling,” he said.

“Sometimes when we're with friends or family I will show them the videos of times I was at Wednesday. It was amazing from the beginning, coming over with a young family; the staff, the people around the club, the fans. It was lovely, everyone was so friendly and helpful to me coming into a new country, a new culture.. I was so happy in my two years there.”

When his Hannover schedule allows, Börner watches Wednesday matches on iFollow and says he has ridden the waves of the 2022/23 season as a supporter would. He is still in touch with several Owls figures – he name-checks Barry Bannan, physio Antonio Quintela and club secretary Lindsey Hinton as people he speaks with every few weeks.

During Hannover’s end-of-season trip last year, the players could have been seen at one stage not wearing suits, club regalia or designer threads, but Sheffield Wednesday shirts sent to Börner by kit man Ash Holland. Teammates will now-and-then make courteous enquiries over Wednesday’s result as an aside in conversation. There’s no doubt the now 32-year-old has taken a little piece of Sheffield back to his homeland.

Apologising for his ‘rusty’ English a few minutes in, Börner is faced with the same dodgy, polite old gag The Star fires back at any foreign Wednesday player to make a similar comment. It’s become a matter of reflex; “Don’t worry, your English is far better than my German!”

As you can imagine, hilarity ensues every time.

“You said that to me the first time we spoke!” he smiled, keenly remembering a nervous first media engagement with the local press way back in September 2019. It’s an attention to the little things that made him such a warm and popular figure with everyone on S6; with media, fans and club staff alike.

Those first few weeks in South Yorkshire were spent trying to impress a manager who had not signed him, while balancing language classes and integration into a whole new culture both on and off the field.

Along with Kadeem Harris and Moses Odubajo, his signing was completed only a few weeks before Steve Bruce’s departure in the summer of 2019. It was a jolt to the system and left him not knowing where he stood, first under Lee Bullen as caretaker and then Garry Monk.

“Steve Bruce signed me,” he said before launching into a spirit of exasperation.

(NB. We’ve removed one or two joyously delivered swear words from the transcript. Börner always did like to let out the odd f-bomb in interviews.)

“After two weeks we got Garry Monk! I moved country, I chose my club, the gaffer who wanted to sign me was there and two weeks later he is gone!

“But at the end Garry was a good, young gaffer with a lot of know-how. The football side was good but also the human aspect, we spoke often and he spoke with my family. For example, he asked me about the football in Germany. He wanted to learn as well.”

He spoke fondly of Darren Moore, with whom he only worked for a few interrupted weeks at the end of the Owls’ relegation season in 2021, but initially forgets his time with Tony Pulis, for which he shows a little less glowing in his enthusiasm it has to be said, though paying huge respect to the Welshman’s career and what he achieved in the game.

You get the impression there was much more he could have said, but that’s not Julian Börner’s style. He’s a fun-time cheeky chappie with a love for football dwarfed only by his love for his family.

“My daughter was in an English nursery,” he said. His daughter was just two when Börner made the free transfer switch from Arminia Bielefeld.

“When she arrived back in Germany she spoke more English with her grandparents than she did German! It was an amazing experience for her and for us.

“When we moved back sometimes she used the uniform from the nursery in England. It was really sweet.”

It is that young family that inspired a move back to the homeland for Börner, along with the reality of Wednesday’s relegation to League One and the opportunity to join Hannover, a monster club built very much in the same image as the one standing at S6; proud and traditional with a passionate fan base that has tasted all the ups and more recently downs that football has to offer.

From a football perspective, it was an opportunity too big for a German to turn down, he said. The club is huge, their stadium state-of-the-art and built for the 2006 World Cup. Their average attendance scales over 30,000 and the two-or-three times a season they sell out their stadium, 49,000 are present.

But as well as that and as with most things since, the society-shifting nature of Covid-19 played a big part in a decision to head home.

His transfer to Hannover was protracted. As reported at the time, a lack of clarity over the validity of his contract – it had been suggested he was within his rights to leave on a free transfer due to Wednesday having not been able to pay players for months of the 2020/21 season – made things tricky.

In the end, a small fee was agreed. But even in the will-he-won’t-he weeks of uncertainty for both him and his family, there was never a flicker of consideration on Börner’s side to force a move or down tools at S6.

He is thankful that Darren Moore understood the situation, he said, and supported his decision, but stresses that if a deal hadn’t been agreed, he’d have happily continued as a Wednesday player.

“My parents and my wife's parents live not so far away [from Hannover], so for our children after the Coronavirus we wanted them to spend time with their grandparents,” he said. “I had the chance to sign for Hannover 96. If it wasn't able to happen, I could well have imagined staying in Sheffield and continuing to play for Wednesday.

“Covid made it difficult for everyone. We would have different friends and family visiting once or twice a month but that second year it was nobody because of Covid. My son was born in Germany between the seasons and when my wife came back to England we were alone.

“It was nice to spend time with my family but it was our first time with two kids, you need and want the grandparents and people to help sometimes. My children couldn't see their grandparents for a long time which wasn't nice. But my time in Sheffield was a great time.”

Börner signs off the call with a grin that has barely wavered in enthusiasm and asks The Star to pass on his love and best wishes to the supporters of Sheffield Wednesday. He says one day he’d like to return and do the half-time raffle former players are welcomed back for each home game.

After descriptions of iFollow sign-ups, confused German teammates adorned in Wednesday kit and 45 minutes of chat, it’s clear he really means it. Schedules allowing, he’ll be back one day to pass those well wishes on face to face.

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