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Bundesliga Thread

PoleInGoal

Well-Known Member

Player:Tomiyasu
Saarbrücken (4th league!) eliminates Fortuna Düsseldorf and is in the semi-final in the DFB-Pokal.

Probably all their costs for a year covered with this money. Crazy.
My neighbour is in a state of shock. First the farce against Hertha and now this. Fortuna have more bottlers than Arsenal, I was looking forward to the possibility of a semi-final and even a trip to Berlin.

It's amazing what a penalty shootout does to you. Players who are usually very reliable and who seem mentally strong, e.g. Stoger and Zimmerman, I would've backed them to score in the shootout the pressure got to them.

It's damn frustrating as a Fortuna fan but you have to say big congratulations to Saarbrucken. Their keeper will go down as a legend.
 

PoleInGoal

Well-Known Member

Player:Tomiyasu
Maybe today some more insight into the current fan protests in Germany because it basically amounts to a "culture war" about the future of football between fans and officials in which Dietmar Hopp is not the target per se, but a placeholder for what fans are angry about.

Hopp was targeted by fans in Dortmund, Cologne, Berlin (Union), Dresden, Meppen and Hoffenheim (by Bayern fans), Hannover. This isn't just a few fans of one club, but a broader movement almost. The fact most media outlets, club, league and association officials failed to grasp or even outright decided to omit, is the actual reason behind the current protests: Dortmund fans have collectively been banned from attending games in Hoffenheim after they had raised a protest banner against Hopp last weekend. A protest that is as old as Hoffenheim and Leipzig: A billionaire pushes a club from a village with 3000 residents into the 1. Bundesliga, pushing bigger, traditional but less financially strong clubs aside. The Red Bull franchise is an even more perverse construct. Just to remind you: RB Leipzig isn't even a real club. They have (iirc) 5 or 7 members, the smallest number to get "club status"; you cannot get a membership. And there's far more.

But back to the current situation. So let that sink in: Until 2022 all Dortmund fans are banned from attending their team's games in Hoffenheim, because some of them raised a banner which voiced legitimate criticism about the ongoing commercialisation and financial doping in an of course damnable way. The protests of this weekend are mostly against these unreasonable collective punishments which DFL and DFB had actually banned years ago. Now they're back and fans are angry. An important detail here is that Hopp's company SAP isn't just the financial sugardaddy of TSG Hoffenheim, but a premium partner and sponsor of DFB and Bundesliga, and in that role Hopp has quite some weight and apparently pulled some string to make the ban happen.

Obiviously more anger towards Hopp followed and along came the pathetic outcry of sports officials. Hopp's lawyer went on TV Sunday night and said fans' homes should be searched and if they are entangled in such acts they should go to prison. DFL has now said that any game will be stopped if Hopp is somehow mentioned in banners or songs with the reasoning behind it being the nature of the words used: Son of a *****. Now this is a peculiar thing. Timo Werner has been targetted by opposition fans for years with the slogan "Timo Werner is the son of a *****". This went so far that a German Mallorca Ballermann musician produced a party hit named "Imo Erner ist kein Uhrensohn": Imo Erner is not the son of a clock. Which phonetically is the basically the same, and in public quickly became "Timo Werner ist ein Hurensohn" again and this guy absolutely banked on that. Well, did the DFL do anything against these public and consistent attacks on the player? No. But now that one of their own has to "suffer" amidst the general criticism of fans, the word is unspeakable and a whole fandom has to be banned from a certain stadium.
What's even more laughable is if you compare the stance towards this case, and what happened with Torunarigha. Referees are now to break off games when Hopp is criticized, but not when a player is obviously racially abused. DFB and DFL are not finally taking a stand against general abuse of all sorts in stadiums, they are protecting one of their golden boys and it's starting to feel like they are trying to ban even legitimate criticism from stadiums. And this is essentially what this is all about.

On one side there's the fans, especially Ultras, who are concerned about commercialisation, financial doping and basically what's nothing else but sanitation of fan culture from critical voices and inconvenient noise on the way to shaping football into a sterile entertainment product for the well situated. On the other side there's the leagues, the association and the clubs - especially the big, rich clubs - who see the potential to make even more money out of football if it is changed into an entertainment product like the Super Bowl or a Taylor Swift concert while draining it of its emotional core but making it more appealing to bigger, average, masses who are into events and entertainment but not football - basically those who spend. The DFB has actually been pushing this agenda nonstop and very succesfully via games of the German National Team, which have become very, very close to emotionless, Saturday night entertainment events.

Well put, the whole situation is a complete joke. Personally I didn't have a huge issue with Hopp as someone who has backed his home club, didn't turn it into some marketing project like Leipzig, and they've been fairly conservative financially since getting to the bundesliga. But the events have changed my view. The thing with billionaires is that they're not used to not getting their way and they'll throw their toys out the pram is they have to.

The good thing is that knowing the German fans, they are properly stubborn and they won't back down, I think things will escalate further but I expect there'll be a lot of solidarity from all of the fanbases and DFB will have to eventually cave. It's just a question of how much damage is done by that point.
 

Toby

No longer a Stuttgart Fan
Moderator
The good thing is that knowing the German fans, they are properly stubborn and they won't back down, I think things will escalate further but I expect there'll be a lot of solidarity from all of the fanbases and DFB will have to eventually cave. It's just a question of how much damage is done by that point.

I fully expect the situation to escalate. Fandom will eventually resort to lower leagues and regional clubs, while probably about a third to half of the current Bundesliga crop will get to keep their status among one or two european Super Leagues which will definitely go the route of entertainment. And to be honest I can't even say I want money and succes more than I want to enjoy the game and relate to my team(s). I'd much rather see Stuttgart constantly play in second or third divisions but have the emotional connection, the shared emotion in stadium with fans, the choroes and songs and everything, the whole thing really of going to the stadium and supporting your team, than see Stuttgart in some sort of CL but everything around the club is sterile entertainment.

And make no mistake, most other leagues are in front of Germany in this development. By 2024 we will have a completely different game of football.
 

The White Pelè

Human Highlight Reel
Freiburg, Werder, Leverkusen and Schalke up at HT. Leipzig draw, instead.
Leverkusen are having a fantastic season, more than you thought at the start of the season.
 

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