Every weekend, roughly 2.4 million Germans go out and watch their local team, even though a much-trumpeted professional game will probably be on television at the same time, now that the big clubs' games are spread all across the weekend. These are good numbers and we are rightfully proud of how amazingly well the upper leagues are supported in Germany.īut those figures pale when you compare them with the amateur game. Liga) and the three-tiered Regionalligen, the fourth divisions. On a good weekend, some 625,000 German football fans will go out and attend the games in the Bundesliga, the second division (2. The amateur spirit that still permeates our football, he said, should actually be praised for being the backbone that carries, well, everything. When my book about the history of German football first came out, the worst review I got came from a German who chastised me for mocking the fact we outlawed professionalism until well into the 1960s. Despite the presence of some well-known clubs at this tier - former German champions VfR Mannheim and former cup winners Schwarz-Weiss Essen, for example - this is what we call amateur football.Īpart from being a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, the day reminded me of how central amateur football still is to the game here. It was a game in the Schleswig-Holstein-Liga, one of the 11 regional divisions that currently make up the fifth level of German football. There's no point in telling you who played whom and who scored - suffice it to say that I had a stunning conversation with the groundskeeper, who is an old pal of Otto Rehhagel and owns the very ball with which Bremen's Uwe Reinders scored from a throw-in against Bayern Munich. Then the final whistle blew, we all went home and, all things considered, the world was not a bad place to be.
I had a few beers and a bratwurst, I applauded good moves and shook my head at bad ones while squinting against the sun. They hit the post, then scored to make it 3-2 and in the final 20 minutes it was thrilling end-to-end stuff, though even the best chances went begging.
The home side, in fourth place when the game began, pulled one back early in the second half and proceeded to throw everything forward. Huge numbers of German fans turn out to watch their local teams on a weekly basis Soccernet The visitors, second from bottom, scored from a set-piece in the first minute and then, as the hosts piled on the pressure looking for an equaliser, added two goals from counter attacks for a stunning 3-0 lead at half-time.
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