Did someone say 5-1? (German Football in General)

Member Name: Belgian999

Product:	German Football in General
Date:	07/12/01 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very cheap to watch, standard is improving

Disadvantages: Crowds are low outside the top division

How do you rate football in general? Well, a good place to start is with the actual structure of the sport, and football in Germany is organised somewhat differently to the beautiful game in England – well, perhaps it is fairer to say that England differs from the rest of the world, as there are far more full time professional outfits plying their trade in English leagues than in any other country. The Premiership sits at the top of the tree, followed by the three Football League divisions, and the Football Conference (which is where you find the first semi-professional teams) below that. Regionalisation is only introduced at level 6 of this football pyramid in England, as the leagues split into Isthmian (covering southeast England), Southern, and Northern Premier, with smaller regional leagues and then county leagues below them.

In Germany, however, there are only 2 fully professional, national leagues – the Bundesliga and its second division. These each have 18 teams, with 3-up, 3-down between the top and second tiers, and 4 teams are relegated from the 2. Bundesliga each year. Below the second division you have the Regionalliga Nord and Süd (which still include some part-time sides), and these sit atop the ten Oberligen, which are arranged roughly according to the boundaries of the federal states that make up the reunited Germany. Below the Oberliga, you have the Landesliga, Verbandsliga, Bezirksliga and Kreisliga, with fluid promotion and relegation between all levels, normally governed by complicated play-off systems between the top clubs in the various leagues.

Still with me? There’s more. Whereas in England, the main criterion for promotion is the standard of each team’s stadium, German football places much more importance on solvency and an ability to budget within a set amount for each season. This means that a club like SSV Ulm, which was playing in the Bundesliga 2 years ago, did not budget correctly for the seaso
n following their relegation, and as a consequence they were unable to meet the financial limitations imposed by the German FA and were relegated 4 levels, back to amateur football.

On the other hand, ground regulations are far more relaxed than in England. A good example is provided by the question of floodlights – in England, a club is not even accepted into a level 9 league (such as the Isthmian League Division 3) without floodlights, but here a club can play in the Regionalliga without lights, and without fear of any penalties being levied either. Last week saw Rot-Weiß Erfurt entertain Bundesliga high-flyers Hertha Berlin in the German FA Cup, and the match had to be played at 2pm on a Tuesday as their Russian-built floodlights have not worked for over 2 years!

I am undecided as to whether this is a good thing or not – it does mean that teams that manage their affairs sensibly and do not overextend themselves (SpVgg Unterhaching, LR Ahlen, and others) have the opportunity to progress up the league ladder and play at the level that their performances have earned. However, it often means that teams in the top 2 divisions are playing football in grounds that can only hold a few thousand fans (St Pauli), and that are completely inadequate for big matches, such as those in the UEFA Cup (Union Berlin). Indeed, some grounds in the 2. Bundesliga and Regionalliga would not even pass the inspection to get a Conference ground grading in England, which I still find almost incredible.

Bundesliga stadiums are gradually being brought up to the kind of standard that English fans have got used to since the Taylor Report was implemented, and the grounds in Nuremberg, Kaiserslautern and Mannheim are a pleasure to visit, but many stadia remain hopelessly outdated, with huge uncovered banks of terracing and minimal facilities other than beer stands and antiquated toilets. This will be rectified (if you believe everything Franz Beckenbauer says
!) in plenty of time for the 2006 World Cup, and the magnificent grounds in Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen do make you think that the German football authorities are on the right track.

So much for the infrastructure of the game, what about the level of performance of the actual teams? Well, the top division at least is in a pretty healthy state, as evinced by Bayern Munich’s current status as the best team in Europe after their victory over Valencia in last season’s Champions League final. Bayern are the Manchester United of Germany, loved or loathed in equal intensity, and with a fan base that stretches right across Germany. No matter that I live 4 hours drive from Munich, every time there is a Bayern game on TV, the pub in Walldorf is packed with their fans. And, just like Manchester United in the last few years, Bayern have won just about every trophy you could care to mention, which make them all the more annoying.

Last year, even though Bayern were not at their strongest on the domestic scene, they seemed to win the league title almost by default, in injury time on the last day of the season, as the main challengers made a habit of beating each other. This season, the Bundesliga seems to be a much tighter affair, with Bremen, Dortmund, Leverkusen and Kaiserslautern all challenging hard at the top. European competitions still feature plenty of German involvement as we near the winter break, which is always a good barometer of the strength of the national league. However, having watched plenty of football since moving to Germany, I have to say that Bundesliga games just seem to lack a little bit of finesse, the certain something that would take them to a higher level.

It is far from being a weak league, but it is packed with good (but not brilliant) players from South American and eastern Europe (especially Poland), and players who have just failed to make the breakthrough at the highest level – a prime example being Paul
Agostino. This Australian centre-forward never made the grade in the English second division in his time at Bristol City, but he has been one of the top scorers in the Bundesliga over the past two years, with 1860 Munich, which suggests that the quality of defending is not quite as good as elsewhere.

However, the standard of football in other leagues does not really bear up well in comparison to the second and third levels of English football. I have seen plenty of Regionalliga and 2. Bundesliga matches (normally involving Hannover 96) since 1996, and the games are generally pretty poor. There is a massive gap in skill and fitness for teams that move up and down through the top three levels of German football, made more pronounced by the fact that some Regionalliga teams are only part-time – effectively, it is like watching a Conference side take on a team like Brentford or Rotherham, and the results can be correspondingly one-sided.

On a positive note, however, watching football is extremely cheap over here – you can still get terrace tickets for clubs in the top division for less than 20DM (about 6 quid), and even the most expensive seats in the main stand at many grounds will only set you back 80DM, which equates to the minimum price at many Premiership stadia. Prices in the Regionalliga and Oberliga tend to hover around 10DM, and programmes are excellent value too – they normally cost 1 or 2DM, and some clubs (such as VfB Stuttgart) even give them away for nothing!

One thing you will notice is that many German fans (normally the hardcore ones who stand on the terrace and follow their team home and away) have adopted a sort of standard uniform – mullet hairdo, jeans, sleeveless denim jacket covered in badges (most of which involve celebrating past glories, or pictures of people urinating on the badge of a local rival, or just on Bayern Munich), silly club hats, a replica shirt covered in players’ signature
s, and many, many scarves. However, people don’t tend to wear a scarf in the normal manner – instead, they are tied on the wrists and arms, and people seem to be in competition to see who can get the most number of scarves on any one limb!

So, all in all, German football is cheap, good fun to watch, and has improved markedly over the last few years. I have a Bundesliga highlights video from 1990, which can be described in one word: Dull. This is no longer the case - the atmosphere at many grounds is improving as the stadia are rebuilt, attendances in the top division are good (but even in the Regionalliga there are clubs regularly attracting just a thousand or so spectators) and you are normally guaranteed a few goals. Plus you can always grab a beer and a bratwurst if it gets a bit boring on the pitch, – what more can you ask for?

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