These stickers are from the next city’s football club. They are absolutely hideous proclaiming “death and hate” and featuring grave robbers who are about to exhume German football heroes from 70 years back who played for “the other club”, 60 km to the west – because they are directed towards one particular club, aka “the arch enemy”. I find them (and other actions of the football hooligans) distasteful to the extreme.
Streetlamp posts here often have stickers as have electricity distribution boxes and cigarette vending machines. Many are of various football clubs and they are often really ugly in content, wording, and art. Mainly because they are not in support of the creator’s own club but against the “enemy”, their favourite club to hate.
However, I saw one sticker which I wholeheartedly support because it expresses my disdain for football, national and even more so international football.
“Against modern football!”
I have nothing but scorn for modern football – the amount of money that is involved is immoral, the functionaries are corrupt (probably not all but it has been shown again and again). My last straw was the awarding of the FIFA world cup to Saudi Arabia (Qatar in 2022 was already disgusting: the handing the games to the emirate for lots of money, the questionable selection procedure (which might or might not have involved bribery), the building of new stadiums which was accompanied by what can be described as modern day slavery and totally unacceptable conditions for the workers, the ecologically undefensible air conditioning of whole stadiums – I could go on). When we lived in Saudi we used to make fun of Saudi Arabia’s attempt to get the Olympics into the country, an attempt which was abandoned when they heard that they would have to allow female athletes and female spectators. I don’t know how FIFA will resolve the audience issue – I don’t care. I have stopped watching the sport. My husband still watches, I usually leave him to it but I have nothing but contempt for this sport now.
On a lawn next to the path that football fans take to walk from the station to the stadium are figures of football players representing the nations who played in Kaiserslautern during the World Cup in 2006. The figures are cast in concrete and twenty … Continue reading Overgrown Cheer
Like all feuds between different football clubs the one between Mannheim Waldhof and 1. FC Kaiserslautern is really a silly state of affairs, except possibly for the fan clubs involved. The two clubs are barely 60km apart and after a few unfortunate incidents in the 1980 they have been sworn enemies. The police has to work overtime every time the two clubs play against each other to keep the “fans” (fanatics!) apart and the destruction in the vicinity of the stadions to a minimum.
Even at our favourite Italian restaurant the football matches of the UEFA Euro will be shown. If we want to enjoy our pizza and pasta in peace and quiet we will have to eat at home.
last on the SD-card in my mobile phone
Close by a family can’t decide where their allegiance lies. Maybe one of the serving staff of the restaurant lives there.
It was 1959 when the football club of Frankfurt, die Eintracht, finished top of the Bundesliga. They probably didn’t think it would not happen again for the next 65 years (and it won’t happen this year, either). So they immortalised the headline from that year … Continue reading When Eintracht Frankfurt Won the Championship
I understand that football fans like or even love their respective clubs. I don’t understand that this also includes hatred of other football clubs. Often, it seems, the fans hate the other fans more than the actual players. ”Death to all enemies” and “Destroy your enemies” are … Continue reading It’s Supposed to be Fun
Not mine, I’m afraid. But I have a husband, I have two sons, and I’m German. So along the way I picked up some knowledge about German if not much of the enthusiasm that others feel.
Five matches were played in Kaiserslautern (my husband’s hometown) when Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006. In a square near the train station there are ten statues of players from all the teams that played in K’town (that’s what the US soldiers stationed nearby call it). They are slightly larger than life and I think made of papier mâché judging by the yellow-green moss growing on them.
Spain TrinidadJapanSaudi Arabia
While I do not share this escape route I acknowledge that for many people all over the world it is the perfect escapism.