Tag Archives: Bundesliga

Over the Berlin Wall

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A big welcome to these pages for Michael Miles who recent traveled to Berlin to see Hertha beat FC Köln.

This was my first visit to the Olympiastadion to see Hertha BSC (Berliner Sport-Club) since 2003. On that occasion I sat with about 40,000 other shivering souls marvelling at how the Germans could continue to put on a football match while much of the stadium was a building site preparatory to the 2006 World Cup.

Over four years the whole of the inside of the stadium was demolished and replaced, literally piece by piece. The redevelopment work included the removal of every limestone block to be cleaned, and then replaced, a task compared to completing a huge jigsaw puzzle. The colour of the running track which runs around the pitch (the stadium is a regular venue for athletics events) was changed to blue to match Hertha’s colours.

Thoughts drifted toward our own beloved “stadium of legends”, Wembley. That had closed in October 2000, with a new stadium due to open in 2003. With all the disputes and wrangling, the old Wembley was not even demolished until 2003, and as many a travelling fan can testify, did not properly open for business until the 2007 FA Cup Final. Continue reading →

My name is Stuart and I am an addict

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I didn’t realise I had a problem until I was confronted with it.  The problem was storage.  I had run out of room for my football socks.  Come on admit it, we all have a few pairs don’t we?  Some people collect shirts, others collect programmes (I have a few of those myself) whereas some individuals I wont mention (Dagenham + Dan is a clue) have to keep their match tickets in pristine condition.  Those things do nothing for me.  To me, I express my love of the game with football socks.

CMF says this is a “Syndrome”.  It is obsessive compulsive.  Just because I like socks and never throw a pair away does not make me a bad person.  I never complain about her collection of Marc Dorcel DVD’s so why should she make me feel bad about my collection?  After all I get enjoyment from wearing my socks (and yes I also don’t mind sharing her “hobby” as well”). Sometimes we even swap items in our collections, but that is another story completely.

It all started out of necessity.  I went to a Wasps rugby game, that is how long ago it was – they didn’t have the London bit in their name, despite the fact they played in London, as opposed to now where they are called London Wasps despite playing in Buckinghamshire. It was raining, my shoes had a hole in and my feet got very wet.  I needed to get some new socks and so I went and bought a pair of rugby socks from the club shop.

That was back in 1998 and I still have that pair of black and gold socks today.  After that I was hooked.  It was the comfort, the almost rebellious sign against the system.  I wore purple Fiorentina socks on business meetings.  When people said things like “nice socks” I would launch into the tale of who they belonged to and where I got them.  I wore a pair of olive and chocolate Kappa Werder Bremen socks to a relative’s wedding, going to great lengths to find a new pair of brown shoes that matched the socks. Continue reading →

Another Bundesliga Double

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Our regular German traveller Kevin Morris was off again a few weeks ago to watch games in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt.  Here’s his latest tale.

“It was back to Germany again last week, my 4th trip this year and again, it was a great visit. Friday was Fortuna Dusseldorf v Energie Cottbus in the Bundesliga equivalent of the Championship. A cheapo Ryanair special saw 3 of us arriving in Dusseldorf early on Friday morning. Weeze airport is not too close to Düsseldorf but it is a straight forward journey and given the time we arrived in Germany, we had a fair bit of time to play with. From the airport there was a 10 min bus ride to the nearest train station followed by an hours train journey into Dusseldorf. Neither journey was particularly cheap (4 Euros for the bus and 14 Euros for the train), public transport does seem expensive at present. Once in Dusseldorf, we had to collect our match tickets from the Tourist Information office which seemed to be in completely the opposite direct to that which the sign posts were pointing and then onto the hotel. Düsseldorf is a great City; it is full of bars and restaurants so we spent a pleasant afternoon by the Rheine having a few beers before going on to the game.

We took the easy route and got a taxi but there is a metro line and a station right next to the ground. Match tickets were booked on Fortuna’s website but they wouldn’t deliver the tickets to England. We paid £16 for a seat in the lower tier, along the side, about level with the penalty spot. The ground is impressive, it is a two tier symmetrical stadium, the concourse was remarkably clean and you could walk almost around the entire stadium with the exception of the blocked access for the visitors’ enclosure. A tabloid newspaper sized programme was available inside the stadium only and this cost 1Euro.

The 1st half of the game wasn’t the best, the highlight being the good looking female referee. It livened up in the 2nd half when the visitors took the lead. Fortuna hit back with two goals and the referee, somewhat debatably, disallowed an injury time equaliser for Cottbus.

The support for the home team was pretty impressive, especially in the 2nd half. The supporters around us made us feel welcome and we made full use of being allowed to have a beer in your seat. I find this much more civilised than rushing a pint at 230pm as we would do back home. After the game it was back into the city for more beers, it really is a superb place, especially around the Altstadt (Old Town).

On Saturday morning we took the train to Frankfurt for Eintracht v Borussia Monchengladbach. The train took just under 90 mins and cost approx £20. Frankfurt Station isn’t my favourite place in the world; the area is seedy and populated by beggars or drunks. We got the tram over to the Cathedral and had a few beers around here. Tram line 21 will take you directly to the stadium and they seem to run a stadium special on line 20, I’ve no idea where this starts from but you could pick it up around the church and the train station. The journey to the stadium takes around 15 mins. If there are more than 2 of you travelling, it is cheaper to buy a group travel card which allows up to 5 people to travel on the one ticket. Having a beer in public seems to be common in Germany (and is to be encouraged!) so you will see blokes carrying crates of lager on to the tram or metro on the way to the game, most unlike the London Underground.

The game wasn’t a sell out and Eintracht will post your tickets to the UK. The ground is unique in that once you get through the turnstile; there is still a 10 minute walk to the stadium as it appears to be located in the middle of a forest/park. A UK style programme was available outside of the ground (but inside of the entrance) for 2 Euro; there were also a couple of fanzine sellers. The stadium is superb and for 40 Euros I had an upper tier seat over looking the halfway line. In Germany they don’t seem too worried about segregation so I was surrounded by Borussia fans unfortunately, not all of them managed to remain silent for the one minutes silence for Enke. The atmosphere after this unfortunate incident was superb but again, the football in the first half was severely lacking in quality. The 2nd half livened up considerably, Borussia were 2-1 winners.

The highlight of the trip was the sausage stall who was offering ½ metre long sausages, my idea of heaven.

After the game there was time for a couple of more beers and a bite to eat before the journey home started. In my haste to get a decent fare, I’d booked a late night return from Frankfurt with Ryanair and it was only in the days leading up to the trip that I spotted my mistake. Frankfurt Hahn airport is bloody miles from Frankfurt and it has no train station. Ryanair do lay on an hourly bus service for 12Euros but the journey takes 90mins. Apparently there are 3 other airports closer to Frankfurt than the one Ryanair use. In their defence, I don’t ever recall having a bad Ryanair experience. The flight home arrived at 1130pm and the following day it was off to WHL for Spurs v Wigan….which is a tale in its own right”

Who said there was no money in football anymore?

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Is it any wonder that we are still seeing silly transfer deals going through, with sums changing hands more than the total GDP in some countries when cash is flowing into the game in other areas.  We recently looked at commercial deals in general on the blog (see post from July here) but we now want to look at Shirt Sponsorship again after World Soccer Magazine published its findings.

Liverpool New Shirt - probablyAs of the start of 2010/11 season, the traditional Top 4 in the English Premier League will be earning close to £58m PER ANNUM just for selling the space on their shirts.  Leading the silly money stakes are surprisingly in times of banking crisis, a bank.  Not just any old bank but one that has run into major issues with the sub-prime market in the US.  Step forward Standard Chartered Bank who are taking over the shirt sponsorship from Carlsberg at Anfield.  They feel that an investment of £20.25 million per annum on a four year contract is worthwhile.  And we wonder why we are still in the deepest financial crisis in history.

The top 25 deals in the World in 2009/10 equate to over £225million per annum flowing into football.  If we look at which leagues get the share it looks like:-

English Premier League – £75m (flowing to just 7 clubs)Dortmund
German Bundesliga – £90m (10 clubs)
Spanish La Liga – £16.7m( only 1 club in the top 25 and that is Real Madrid)
Italy’s Serie A – £31m (4 clubs)
France’s Ligue – £14m (3 clubs)

LeverkusenThe Spanish situation is the most surprising – only Real Madrid attract a sponsorship deal worth more than £2.5m per annum.  The other surprise is the mix of clubs from England.  In the top 25 we only have 7 clubs – aside from the “Top 4″ there is Man City, Spurs and Fulham.  No Aston Villa, Newcastle United, West Ham United, Everton or Sunderland.  Could that be because they are still in their old deals?  Not in the case of West Ham or Sunderland that is for sure.

Surely the one sector that needs to take a long hard look at itself is the Online Gambling one….BWin, the Austrian gaming company weren’t satisfied with one top European side to sponsor so they signed up 3!  Real Madrid (£16.7m for 3 years), Bayern Munich (£16.6m for a further 2 years) and AC Milan (£10m pa for 2 years) have all been sporting their logo recently – but surely one online company cannot produce revenues that justify a commitment of over £100m in the next three years.  Emirates aren’t exactly far behind either spending  £5.5m per annum until 2012 with Hamburg, £5m with Arsenal and £3.6m for another 5 years with Paris Saint-Germain – meaning a commitment of over £60m.

Madness, sheer madness…..and as a final point and WITHOUT cheating by using Uncle Google can you name the sponsors of the following 5 clubs all of whom appear in the top 25 AND the 5 clubs from the sponsors name?  Answers on a postcard of course or by clicking here…

Sponsors Name…
1. Juventus are sponsored by this company for another season for £10.1m.  Clue – It’s not Old Dutch
2.  Schalke have already spent their £16.6m this season they get from this company. Clue – Paul Gascoigne’s graduation party?
3. Inter Milan are years into this £5.5m per annum deal. Clue – I bet they get as many calendars as they want
4. Werder Bremen have been passing go and collecting £7.3m for the past few seasons. Clue – You can’t miss their building if you fly into City Airport.
5. Man Utd will get £20m per season until 2013 for this new deal. Clue – A is not off

Easy eh?  So how about these?
1. Evonik pay £7m per season to sponsor which German team?  Clue – they have a real Kop
2. Volkswagon like to keep it close by sponsoring this team who debuted in the Champions League this year? – Clue – Lupo
3. Wind are a big noise in Italy but who do they spend £5.5m per annum on? Clue – Eternally yours
4.  Etihad are an airline but who did they fly into sponsor this season contributing £5m per season in the process? Clue – like they really need the cash!
5. Fraport is one of the biggest transport hubs in the world so why do they need to spend £5m per annum advertising the fact? Clue – Hot dogs all round

VillaIf you can answer these without cheating and get more than 5 then you are an expert or a sucker for sponsorship.  But there are the good guys. Those clubs who want to put things back into the local community or a charity.  These are very rare these days but there are two notable examples – FC Barcelona who still pay to have the Unicef logo on their shirts, and Aston Villa who sport the logo to Acorns, a local hospice..  I am still not convinced.

Thanks to World Soccer Magazine for providing the above financial information and Colours of Football for the graphics.