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Football: Wherever it may be

~ Laurence's football travels

Football: Wherever it may be

Tag Archives: Bundesliga

The Pig & The Pitchfork

01 Wednesday Jun 2022

Posted by laurencereade in I

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2 Liga, Austria, Bundesliga, Football, Grazer, groundhop, groundhopping, Innsbruck, Joachim Löw, Neu Tivoli, Ronivaldo, Tirol Innsbruck, Tivoli, Wacker Innsbruck

Friday 15th April 2022 ko 18:30

Austria Erste-Liga

WACKER INNSBRUCK 1 (Ronivaldo 67p)

GRAZER AK 1 (Perchtold 26)

Att 2,211 at Neu Tivoli Stadion Tirol

Entry €19 (£16.14)

I do like a holiday where once we’ve returned home, I can describe what Robyn and I have done in two ways. Our groundhopping friends get a description of the football matches we watched, and those poor souls who don’t like football get a description of all the touristy places we visited. The trick is to work hard at both! On that basis a Friday night televised game in Innsbruck was a godsend for us, as much as I’m sure it wasn’t for the away fans who would have had a 5 hour drive from Graz to get there. Continue reading →

Auf Wiedersehen Pet

15 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by laurencereade in D

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Auf Wiedersehn Pet, Bundesliga, Düsseldorf, die Toten Hosen, Esprit Arena, Eurovision, Football, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Germany, groundhopping, Ingolstadt, Tyson Fury, Wladimir Klitchko

Sunday 13th February 2011 ko 13.30

2 Bundesliga

FORTUNA DÜSSELDORF 3 (Beister 45 Langeneke 52 64p)

FC INGOLSTADT 1 (Leitl 49p)

Att 20,700

Entry €24

Programme €1

Parking €3.50

In a sense this piece completes the triptych of my first independent groundhopping trip that started at Cambuur Leeuwarden and took in Spakenburg before hopping over the border to Düsseldorf to finish our weekend. As I said previously I knew nothing of how to groundhop abroad, so as  we headed east I wondered how we’d finish our weekend. We crossed from the Netherlands to Germany and immediately spotted a police car checking number plates ( a portent of a future trip to Banik Most?).  I marvelled at how close Düsseldorf is to the border and how I was completely unable to get the theme to “Auf Wiedersehen Pet” out of my head. Continue reading →

51.261582 6.733190

Got me under pressure

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by laurencereade in S

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Tags

Bundesliga, Craig Dabbs, Germany, Kickers Offenbach, Lee West, Ludwigsparkstadion, Regionaliga, Saarbrucken, Saarland

Friday 10th October 2014 ko 19.00

Regionaliga Südwest

1FC SAARBRÜCKEN 1 (Döringer 13)

KICKERS OFFENBACH 1 (von den Burg 82)

Att 7,011

Entry (Haupttribune/Main Stand) €22 (€1 =80p)

Programme 50c

The alarm went off, it was 5.45am, and I was in a cheap hotel in Folkestone, its purpose only to get a car-load of hoppers to the Channel Tunnel as quickly as possible. I shuffled into the bathroom, and ran the shower only to watch the head extricate itself from the holster and hit my razor. The razor exploded in a spray of water, and I contemplated a hirsute weekend over a bacon roll and an Americano as the train travelled under the English Channel.

Continue reading →

49.247500 6.984167

Hop(p)s !

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by laurencereade in S

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Bundesliga, Dietmar Hopp, Germany, Hardtwaldstadion, Hoffenheim, Oberliga Baden-Württemberg, Sandhausen, Sankt, St Pauli, Waldorf Astoria, Walldorf

Saturday 5th April 2014 k 13.00

2 Bundesliga
SV SANDHAUSEN 2 (Blum 50 Adler 69)
FC ST. PAULI 3 (Gonther 55 Schachten 77 Rzatkowski 78)

Att 8,050

Entry Complementary (would have cost €11) for Stehplatz or terrace

Programme FREE

Badge €4

I’m not saying that the Baden-Württemberg town of Sandhausen is low-key, but when you turn off the autobahn and follow the football signposts, you end up at the stadium of FC Astoria Walldorf, who play in the 5th tier Oberliga Baden-Württemberg! It was enough to fool a significant number of St Pauli fans including one group who’d parked up their VW van, lit their barbecue and a cracked open a beer. We found the ground, spotted the error, and trusted the satnav and travelled the 4-or-so kilometres to the correct ground. It proved to be an interesting detour if you understand the recent history of the club.

Sandhausen is a small town that grew up around the growing of hops for beer and tobacco, although the latter is now restricted to just the one district. The Hardtwaltstadion is on the south-western edge of the town and the surrounding streets are shut-down by the Polizei on match-days so it pays to be early as there’s only street parking. Another tip for photographers is that many Bundesliga clubs do not allow SLR cameras in the ground. I took my compact, and immediately spotted a SLR being used, so it isn’t a hard and fast rule.

I joined the queue for a ticket, and was debating whether to go for a seat or to stand when I was tapped on the shoulder, and a complementary handed to me. That made my mind up I suppose! The ground reflects the club’s rapid rise through the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg, and the then third tier Regionalliga Süd. The club were founder members of the new 3 Bundesliga, and won it in 2012. The main stand has had a large terrace added to the right of it, and a huge temporary seated stand behind one goal. Floodlights arrived as late as 2011 and the result is a stadium that is functional rather than beautiful. What makes it remarkable is that is so very nearly never happened.

In 2005 the owner of SAP software, and TSV 1899 Hoffenheim, Dietmar Hopp wanted to merge Hoffenheim with Sandhausen and yes, Astoria Walldorf. ( I wonder if the St Pauli fans made it to the game?) His idea was to create a Heidelberg-based club with the capability of establishing themselves in the 1 Bundesliga. There was plenty of history within Walldorf, the club is after all named after Johann Jacob Astor who was born in Walldorf in 1763 and later emigrated to the United States where he became a successful businessman. His descendants, founders of the Astoria and Waldorf hotel chains supported the town of Walldorf and the new football club, formed in 1908, was named Astoria in his honour.

That history was not likely to be lost easily and when Sandhausen and Walldorf rejected Hopp’s approach, he concentrated his efforts on Hoffenheim funding both their new stadium, the Rhein-Neckar-Arena in Sinsheim 22 km away from Hoffenheim, and their meteoric rise through the divisions to the top-flight.

Despite the ground being nowhere near its 12,100 capacity the walkways seemed full, and the queues for food (7 types of sausage available!) and drinks long. Sankt Pauli are always a draw at this level, people being attracted by their fans social conscience and Ultra culture. Certainly the visiting fans were right behind their team throughout the game, and produced a stunning display of pyro’ and banners before kick-off.

The catch was is that for the vast majority of the game those fans had little or nothing to cheer. The first half was a litany of missed passes and lack of ambition, but the second was a different matter altogether. Sandhausen’s best player Danny Blum took advantage of a defensive howler to fire his team into the lead. St Pauli soon equalised, Gonther heading home, but Sandhausen regained the lead through Nicky Adler taking full advantage of a suicidal Jan-Philipp Kalla pass.

That could, and maybe should have been it, I certainly thought it would be but two goals in a minute won the game for the visitors. St Pauli counter-attacked and a diagonal ball found Marcel Halstenburg on the right. He looked more than a little off-side as he took the ball, but carried on forward before his cross found left-back Sebastian Schachten working the  left channel beautifully. He volleyed home for the goal of my weekend, never mind the game.

That shell-shocked Sandhausen and their misery was completed a minute later when Marc Rzatkowski was on hand to tap home after Manuel Riemann could only parry Halstenburg’s cross out to him. It was quite a turn-round but the anger on the faces of the home faithful was a reminder of how they felt about the genesis of St Pauli’s second goal. I strolled over towards the away end, where the party had started. Not for too long you understand, there was another ground to find, a game to see, and a story or two to discover. I returned to the car with a real sense of two clubs with identities, St Pauli’s wrapped up with what they stand for and Sandhausen’s with their town. That is something that the likes of Dietmar Hopp and others in the higher echelons of football should consider more deeply.









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  • Damage In The Box Chris Powell’s travels across the UK and Europe. The artist must frequently seen in the pub 0
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  • Football Club History Database Want to know where a club finished in what league and in what year? Richard Rundle’s site is a veritable goldmine! 0
  • Football Hopper “Fast” Eddie McGeown’s erudite perambulations around the nation’s football grounds 0
  • Gibbo's 92 As Atherton Colleries’ programme editor puts it, ” The best trips are random, unplanned and spontaneous.” 0
  • Groundhopping.se Per-Gunnar Nilsson’s trips around his native Sweden, and into Europe 0
  • Grounds for concern The late Mishi Morath’s picture blog. Obviously no longer updated but still a wonderful archive. 0
  • Kate Shrewsday. A thousand thousand stories Not about football, but beautiful writing, Kate can make words dance. 0
  • Modus Hopper Random Graham Yapp’s travels 0
  • Swedish Football History & Statistics Mats Nyström’s curates this site, which does exactly what you’d expect 0
  • The 100 Grounds Club Shaun Smith’s groundhopping football blog. The original internet ground logging website. 0
  • The Football Traveller The bible for every groundhopper. Non-League fixtures magazine delivered weekly. Published and edited by Chris Bedford 0
  • The Intinerant Football Watcher Peter finds the grounds other hoppers cannot reach. Top bloke too! 0
  • The66POW Rob Waite’s travels 0

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