Dazzza
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« on: Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 00:54:29 » |
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Superb thread on the swindon-town-fc.co.uk site from Richard the webmaster. Hope he doesn't mind me re-posting it here but it's a cracking read and makes you think....
Huddersfield and my German football experience...
You've probably guessed from the lack of a match report that I didn't make the trip to Huddersfield yesterday - I was half expecting that John would have gone mad and made his third trip to Yorkshire this season - and thanks to the wonders of the STFC World service, instead of listening to the game as I normally would, I was treated to a silent first half, and the second half of Doncaster versus Tranmere - utterly biased commentary with the strongest Yorkshire accent I think I'd ever heard. Thanks NTL.
From what I can gather, seems as though we possibly deserved all three points - and the last three games have seen us gain points against sides in the top six - two away from home. Things are definitely improving, but while we are still failing to win matches (eleven games and counting...), the gap to safety is getting wider - we're now seven points away, and desperately need to start closing the gap before it becomes a chasm. The Bristol City game on the 11th is an absolute must-win (and, I imagine, quite different from the match Sky were expecting to be screening when it was chosen) - before then, a morale boosting victory over Boston would be welcome as well, to get the run going properly. If we lose against City, I fear that League Two almost certainly awaits us next year.
So, in the absence of a Huddersfield report, I thought I'd treat (?) you to my experience of a wholly different encounter - last week, whilst in Germany, I sampled a DFB-Pokal Second Round match (the German equivalent of the FA Cup), between two teams in the second level of the German pyramid - Kickers Offenbach vs Karlsruher SC.
I didn't quite know what to expect - but the overriding impression I got was that the game in Germany is just like watching football in England fifteen or twenty years ago. There were many reasons for this - not least that a bloke in front of us had an awful permed mullet - but also that half of the ground was terraced, the away fans were fenced in behind the goal, people were drinking beer whilst watching the game, that sort of thing. We stood along one side of the pitch - directly opposite a stand not unlike our South Stand, albeit slightly smaller - in with the most hardcore of the Offenbach support. Standing close to the exits, I spent a lot of the game dodging the endless stream of Kickers fans going to refill their plastic beer glasses!
The atmosphere also seemed to be more hostile than I'm used to now, there were certainly fewer women and children there than your average English game, but more of your skinhead types with tattooed necks. That said, the support that the vocal Offenbach fans gave was excellent - much more positive than you'd get over here - and hardly a mention of the opposition. Karlsruhe were booed when they came onto the pitch, but that was about it - other than that, there were a couple of "Schiesse Frankfurt" songs aimed at their rivals Eintracht, but the vast majority of the singing was positive and getting behind the team. Some of it was quite disturbing, not least the "We love you Kickers, we you", (yes, you!) sung in errr... less than perfect English, and the haunting "Sha-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, Super-Kickers-Offenbach!" Jesus. I wondered if they'd start chanting "Easy, Easy" when they scored, but we were saved from that, at least.
The biggest shock of the evening for me though, came when I found out how much the tickets were. I was amazed to find that the entrance fee for this, and any other league game, was a mere €9 (just over £6) - when I got into the ground, I handed a programme seller a €5 note, and he looked at me in bewilderment, before handing out my €4.50 change. My programme had cost me approximately 35 pence. Shocking.
As for the game, it was noticeably less direct than your average Town game - the ball was hardly ever in the air. Kickers had two pacy strikers who didn't look like they ever passed to each other - and one ws guilty of a terrible miss - rushing onto one of the few long through balls in the game, Dorn (the striker) took the ball into the area, but instead of powering it across goal with his left foot, he shanked an awful 90 degree effort wide with his right. Luckily for him, his strike partner Türker opened the scoring shortly afterwards, from an almost identical position - two minutes later, the lead was doubled with a lovely curling effort from outside the area, from the midfielder Wörle. I nearly got knocked over by a jubilant group of Kickers fans.
Karlsruhe came into the game more in the second half, and had a couple of decent chances saved by the Offenbach keeper, who seemed like he never ever caught the ball - though to be fair to him, he had taken a knock in the first half. Offenbach should have wrapped it up with a free header that went straight at the keeper - but were pegged back to 2-1 after some poor defending by a much-maligned player in the Kickers defence (looked like Rory Fallon playing centre back) allowed a Karlsruhe goal. This came with twenty minutes to go - bringing some jitters at the back - Karlsruhe throwing everything (including the keeper) forward looking for the equaliser. It very nearly came - first when an agonizing low ball across the face of the goal was just out of the reach of the Karlsruhe forwards, and secondly from a corner, when a header was goalbound, before a defender on the line just got his studs to it to divert it onto the post.
Kickers hung on for the victory - and then, rather bizarrely in my opinion, celebrated like they'd won the Cup itself - firstly by getting into one of those huddles in the middle of the pitch and bouncing around, and then all joining hands in a line and running up to the Offenbach fans, who cheered as they lifted their hands into the air triumphantly. It seemed a bit over the top, but there was definitely more of a bond between the players and the fans (I wonder how much they get paid), and I was later informed that they do the joining hands thing every time they win, and sometimes even if they draw. Very odd.
So, it was certainly different - some of it had me harking back to the good old days, other bits made me appreciate just how much English football had changed. I have to say that the entrance fee annoyed me - we can pay nearly four times the amount for a worse standard of football, and even the so-say cheaper football in this division (or certainly in the equivalent level - the Championship) doesn't compare at all with the value of a ticket at Offenbach, whose prices are more comparable with Supermarine's. Admittedly, the facilities at Offenbach were not the best - but the difference in price is absolutely unbelievable.
This message was edited on Sunday, October 30, 2005 at 15:44.
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