Bundesliga review part 2. the new one :)

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Great to see that you had a good time despite the dreadful performance by City.

Seems you managed to fullfill the typical Englishman abroad stereotypes as well. Your dad got drunk and you entered full "lobster mode"! :)

As much as I dislike the majority of the new "Arena" style football grounds you at least are protected from the elements in the majority of cases.

The memories of our first home match after we went down to the second division for the first time still haunt me. Back then we still had a ground similar to the one of Karlsruhe (same layout, even though our ground was slightly bigger).
We played Fortuna Düsseldorf back then (Düsseldorf was a team going up and down between 3rd and 2nd division and far from the team they are today), the match itself was horrible, our ground which was 60k capacity back then had maybe 25k fans attending and it was pissing down non stop.

I was just standing there on the old standing terrace ( obviously no roof either, but hey...the die hards had to be in the famous "g-block" ;) ) getting completely soaked, watching us play the mighty Düsseldorf while we played the likes of Juventus Turin etc. just a couple month back and was thinking to myself..."ok, so this is how it feels to play 2nd division football, lets just hope we are out here again next year".

If I knew what we would have to endure in the coming years I would most likely had given up football completely. :(
 
Just about recovered from a weekend when virtually everything went wrong.


Flew to Munich on the Friday and a few beers on the Marienplatz. Early train to Stuttgart,, only to discover that the ubahn wasn’t running.


Sbahn to Bad Cannstadt, following the home fans, only to discover that they were also disorientated, and were arguing amongst themselves, over the quickest route.


A couple of beers in the biergarten next to the stadium, but disappointed that none of our German friends advised us about the ridiculous diversion to the away end, which drew faint comparisons with Vicarage Road in the 1980s.


Bumped into Tbilisi and Innsbruck Blue before witnessing arguably our worst 45 minutes since the takeover in 2008.


Still no Ubahn after the game, so avoiding the chaos at Bad Cannstadt, we elected to walk the 4 miles back to the hauptbahnhof, whilst strangely interrupting a gang of young Indians playing cricket in the local park.


The previous train to Munich had been cancelled, so our train was rammed, and thanks to some idiotic City fans, the bar was closed.


Sunday was spent sightseeing, but the real fun and games appeared once we had gone through Passport Control at Munich Airport, and sat waiting in the Departure Lounge.


At 20:45 we were politely informed that our 21:45 had been cancelled, and to rub salt into the wounds, there wasn’t another available Easyjet flight to England till Thursday.


Once more we bumped into Tbilisi and after declining Easyjet’s offer of four nights in a hotel and 250 Euros compensation, we opted for another night in Munich and then a six hour train journey for our replacement flight from Dusseldorf.

Thankfully, the three of us kept our sense of humour, and even contrived to enjoy our train ride with a few more beers whilst observing the splendid contours of the River Rhine.


So our bargain £250 weekend cost around £500 for three nights and an extra flight,, but the sting in the tail, is that (just like a similar experience in Rome last December) I’m the only one covered by my Travel Insurance.

In fact I would strongly recommend that everyone checks if their Travel insurance covers flight cancellation,and subsequent added expenses
 
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Scaring Europe to Death said:
Just about recovered from a weekend when virtually everything went wrong.


Flew to Munich on the Friday and a few beers on the Marienplatz. Early train to Stuttgart,, only to discover that the ubahn wasn’t running.


Sbahn to Bad Cannstadt, following the home fans, only to discover that they were also disorientated, and were arguing amongst themselves, over the quickest route.


A couple of beers in the biergarten next to the stadium, but disappointed that none of our German friends advised us about the ridiculous diversion to the away end, which drew faint comparisons with Vicarage Road in the 1980s.


Bumped into Tbilisi and Innsbruck Blue before witnessing arguably our worst 45 minutes since the takeover in 2008.


Still no Ubahn after the game, so avoiding the chaos at Bad Cannstadt, we elected to walk the 4 miles back to the hauptbahnhof, whilst strangely interrupting a gang of young Indians playing cricket in the local park.


The previous train to Munich had been cancelled, so our train was rammed, and thanks to some idiotic City fans, the bar was closed.


Sunday was spent sightseeing, but the real fun and games appeared once we had gone through Passport Control at Munich Airport, and sat waiting in the Departure Lounge.


At 20:45 we were politely informed that our 21:45 had been cancelled, and to rub salt into the wounds, there wasn’t another available Easyjet flight to England till Thursday.


Once more we bumped into Tbilisi and after declining Easyjet’s offer of four nights in a hotel and 250 Euros compensation, we opted for another night in Munich and then a six hour train journey for our replacement flight from Dusseldorf.

Thankfully, the three of us kept our sense of humour, and even contrived to enjoy our train ride with a few more beers whilst observing the splendid contours of the River Rhine.


So our bargain £250 weekend cost around £500 for three nights and an extra flight,, but the sting in the tail, is that (just like a similar experience in Rome last December) I’m the only one covered by my Travel Insurance.

In fact I would strongly recommend that everyone checks if their Travel insurance covers flight cancellation,and subsequent added expenses
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The theme running through this post is that whenever this Tbilisi chap turned up things started turning to shit....oh wait a minute ;)
 
Tbilisi said:
The theme running through this post is that whenever this Tbilisi chap turned up things started turning to shit....oh wait a minute ;)
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Funny you should say that because I bumped into Dee this afternoon in the local Tesco’s. Almost without hesitation I produced my credit card because that’s all I seemed to do all last weekend.

Ironic that City only took about 200 to Stuttgart, but 3 of us live within walking distance of each other, roughly 20 miles South of Manchester.
 
Finally football season will start!

1st round of the cup today and there are some pretty tasty fixtures:

Rot Weiß Essen - Düsseldorf --> there is already some pretty intense build up going on to this match with a graffiti war between both sets of fans. Ultras Düsseldorf came up with a nice motto for the match: "Saufen statt Essen". Essen is not just the name of the town, but is the German word for "to eat" as well, so Düsseldorf came up with a motto which translates to "Rather drink than eat". Guess the "joke" will be lost in translation but I gave it a try! :(

Duisburg - Schalke --> Clubs like Duisburg, Bochum and Essen are in the unfortunate situation to be the smaller clubs in the Ruhrpott which is dominated by Schalke and Dortmund, so a clash between small Duisburg and Schalke is a pretty big event for Duisburg. Duisburg already came up with a pretty big "MSV Hooligans" graffiti and a call to arms to "hunt Schalke fans" today. Could get really tasty as Duisburg is supposed to have a stolen Schalke banner in their posession which might be put on display at the match.

Chemnitz - Dortmund --> Dortmund will play in the "wild east" tomorrow and Chemnitz has already started crossing Ultras Dortmund Graffitis in Dortmund and put up a new one which just reads " August 9th, when? where? how many? See you on Sunday" signed with "Chemnitz Hooligans"
 
The german season has started with the first nationwide cup round. The 36 Bundesliga-teams, the four best of League 3 and 24 winner of regional cups and leagues are in the race. So far only Hoffenheim went out away at 1860 and Karlsruhe, Union Berlin and Greuther Fürth are the casualties from Bundesliga 2. For all other Bundesliga clubs it was easy going so far, only the Fishheads from SV Werder and the Puppet box from Augsburg had their problems. Happy about the good Schalke start, especially as i don´t like the fans of the Duisburg zebras.


TuS Erndtebrück 0-5 SV Darmstadt

BFC Dynamo 0-2 FSV Frankfurt

SV 07 Elversberg 1-3 e.t. FC Augsburg

Viktoria Köln 2-1 1.FC Union Berlin

SV Meppen 0-4 1. FC Köln

Hallescher FC 0-1 Eintracht Braunschweig

Stuttgarter Kickers 1-4 VfL Wolfsburg

Sportfreunde Lotte 0-3 Bayer Leverkusen

MSV Duisburg 0-5 FC Schalke 04

Würzburger Kickers 0-2 e.t Werder Bremen

Erzgebirge Aue 1-0 Spvgg Greuther Fürth

Bremer SV 0-3 Eintracht Frankfurt

TSV 1860 München 2-0 1899 Hoffenheim

SSV Reutlingen 3-1 Karlsruher SC , 3 penalties for Reutlingen, 3 KSC players sent off.

Holstein Kiel 1-2 VfB Stuttgart
 
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There are five Regionalliga divisions (North, Northeast, West, Southwest and Bavaria). The 5 Champions and the second from Southwest are going into the play-offs with the three winners are promoted. It is the bottleneck in the german league system. And Alemannia will stay down there for a long while. They are not even favorites for the title in their division.
 
Ruhr said:
There are five Regionalliga divisions (North, Northeast, West, Southwest and Bavaria). The 5 Champions and the second from Southwest are going into the play-offs with the three winners are promoted. It is the bottleneck in the german league system. And Alemannia will stay down there for a long while. They are not even favorites for the title in their division.
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Thanks Ruhr.....its worse than I thought,hoping to get over for a game this season,never been to the ground(old or new)but seen them away from home in Europe(well at Koln)and same in the league.
 
Ruhr said:
There are five Regionalliga divisions (North, Northeast, West, Southwest and Bavaria). The 5 Champions and the second from Southwest are going into the play-offs with the three winners are promoted. It is the bottleneck in the german league system. And Alemannia will stay down there for a long while. They are not even favorites for the title in their division.
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This is something that's confused me for a couple of seasons. How come 2nd place in south west gets to compete but none of the other divisions? (Obviously they need 6 teams) but is it on a rotational basis?
 
The german FA is build on federal FAs. The bavarian FA demanded their own League, so they had five, but needed then six clubs for the play-offs. So a further place went to the south west, because this divison covers a very large area of germany (4 of the german states, 7 regional FAs many clubs and large part of the population). From north of Frankfurt down to Freiburg at the swiss border and to the Saarland at the french border. It´s nonsense, especially when the second gains promotion and the champion doesn´t.
 
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Tbilisi said:
I got a copy of Kicker when I was in Stuttgart,is it right that Regionalliga West have just one promotion place and no play off?

If so my favs Aachen are going to be down there for a while.
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Basically If I'm right, the winners of each Regionalliga (North, Bavaria etc) go into the promotion playoffs against another champion, or second place side in some cases in the larger regional league. In Aachen's case only the winner goes through so you're right it probably will take them a long time.
 
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