Football The 2010/2011 Season Thread

[Vladamir]

He's highlighting Liverpools achievement for the season was doing the double over us

 

[Lethul]

He's highlighting Liverpools achievement for the season was doing the double over us

Tada!

Another fun fact is that Torres scored more goals against Chelsea than for Chelsea!










Then again that is standard for Jamie Carragher

 

[eksdee]

Anyone read issue zero or received issue one of The Blizzard? I just found out about it today but it looks interesting:

The Blizzard

Going to try and get them to feature a 'zine I'm working on (almost finished infact) called 'Real Men: The Lost Art of the Football 'Tache'. Anyone think of any other places I could try? Already planning to badger The Football Ramble and possibly The Guardian to try and get a mention on their podcasts.

 

[megadave]

lol


I don't get how Jack Warner can get a different corruption charge every few months and still nothing happens, I'd love to meet that cnut in the street.


Can't believe Owen is moaning about not getting called up for England. He's the one who moved to a club where he knows he'll get a handful of starts a season, fucking moron scouser. Michael Owen hits out at Fabio Capello for his England exile | Football | The Guardian

 

[megadave]

Anyone read issue zero or received issue one of The Blizzard? I just found out about it today but it looks interesting:

The Blizzard

Going to try and get them to feature a 'zine I'm working on (almost finished infact) called 'Real Men: The Lost Art of the Football 'Tache'. Anyone think of any other places I could try? Already planning to badger The Football Ramble and possibly The Guardian to try and get a mention on their podcasts.

I read a few articles of the first issue (downloaded it for £1) I'm sure I heard about it through a guardian podcast months back in fact. Was pretty good, very long articles that go into depth, well written and researched. Only problem for me is that I couldn't have cared less about the subjects of a few articles.

 

[Ch3tan]

£30 for four episodes is a bit steep! I'd have subscribed to it if it was a more reasonable price.

 

[megadave]

It's not like a normal magazine though,some articles are a good 20 pages long, you should download the first edition for whatever you like to check it out.
Here's the first article about St Pauli. Although i doubt anyone will read it in this format

Spoiler

The Conversion of St Pauli?
Back in the Bundesliga, Europe’s most noted countercultural
club is having to balance its ethos with the
desire for a secure fi nancial future
By Uli Hesse
Isn’t it strange that nobody ever
mentions the bunker? It’s the fi rst thing
you notice when you visit the home
of FC St Pauli. It grabs your attention
when you watch a St Pauli home game
on television. And it towers over you
when you are at the ground, like a pale,
colossal, immovable watchman. But
nobody ever mentions it.
When CNN sent a camera crew to St
Pauli last summer to document what
they called “the world’s coolest football
club”, they drew attention to the
prostitutes, the punk rockers and the
pirate fl ags. They talked to a drunken
supporter, who told them there were
junkies and homeless people among the
fans. They met two fans from Poland,
who explained that “what makes St Pauli
so great is the good mixture of politics
and football.” And the reporters were
impressed, thrilled even, when some
St Pauli ultras objected to being fi lmed
and forcefully deleted footage from the
camera. But the Americans didn’t show
the bunker, not for a second.
When the noted Viennese football
magazine Ballesterer dispatched two
writers last April to fi nd out if the world’s
most famous rebel club may be on
the verge of selling out and joining the
establishment, they mentioned the
business seats and the expensive VIP
boxes in the shiny, rebuilt main stand.
They pointed out that the anarchist
activists, the club’s old fan-base, were
growing uneasy about the young ultras,
who have the image of Ché Guevara
in their logo but are too organised, too
imperious for some veterans’ tastes.
Ballesterer even talked to one of the men
who started all this but who has since
walked out in disgust because it’s become
too posh for him. Yet the Austrians didn’t
once mention the bunker.
This is strange because we’re not talking
about a normal bunker. We’re talking
about an enormous slab of concrete that
is roughly 40m high and so massive that
when you approach from the north-east,
it obscures most of the ground apart
from the fl oodlights. It was built during
the war to serve as both an anti-aircraft
tower and a fortress. It could give shelter
to almost 30,000 people — about as
many as St Pauli’s stadium will hold once
rebuilding is completed. The reason it’s
still there so many years after the end of
the war is quite simple: it’s so solid that
you cannot destroy it by normal means.
At fi rst it seems very odd that this
gigantic reminder of Germany’s fascist
and violent past stands here, of all
places: right next to the home of the
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
9
world’s most resolutely anti-fascist and
anti-violent sports club. St Pauli’s fans
won’t even sing songs that insult other
teams and never put down or taunt the
opposition during games, yet they live in
the shadow of a monument that once
had guns on the roof and was designed
to kill.
However, once you’ve spent a few days
in St Pauli, the quarter of the city of
Hamburg best known for its football
club and the red light district around the
Reeperbahn, it doesn’t seem quite so odd
anymore. There are similar incongruities
everywhere. Right next to what — rather
grandiosely — calls itself the “St Pauli
Tourist Offi ce”, for instance, an old house
has been partly demolished. But this act
of destruction reveals a smaller building
at the rear, covered in ivy. It’s a dancing
school. Peek through the debris and
the ruins on warm evenings, when the
doors are kept open, and you can see old
people tangoing slowly.
Everything here is based on and boosted
by such contrasts; from the scowling
skinheads in their black hoodies who
turn out to be sweet kids who write for
football fanzines to St Pauli’s low-budget
team that runs out to AC/DC’s “Hell’s
Bells” but insists on playing cultured
combination football even after being
promoted back to the Bundesliga. And
so it seems almost natural that some
people claim St Pauli is cool and crazy
while others insist it’s all going down the
drain and has become commercialised.
Or that Dirk Matzke, who was and is
an important fi gure among St Pauli’s
support, adds his own twist by saying:
“This is now a club like any other.” When
he senses disbelief, he stresses: “It’s true.
St Pauli is a totally normal club.”
With so many contrasting and confl icting
opinions and impressions, it’s not easy to
fi nd out what the club is really like and
where it seems to be going. So perhaps
it’s best to start somewhere else and ask
yourself where all this has come from.
Because the club as it is today is manmade,
not heaven-sent.
“The gates of hell,” says Hermann
Schmidt, “now, that’s an interesting
story.” He is sitting outside the Shamrock,
an Irish pub which is just a long goal-kick
away from the ground (although you
can’t really see it from there because of
the bunker). Schmidt’s beige-coloured
St Pauli cap is resting on the table, next
to his third or maybe fourth glass of
Guinness. In just two hours, St Pauli will
play their fi rst Bundesliga home game in
eight years, but Schmidt doesn’t betray
the slightest sign of excitement. He is
in his early sixties and has seen many St
Pauli games in many divisions.
“There was an excellent German journalist
called Michael Holzach,” Schmidt begins.
“He is famous for his bestseller about how
he travelled through Germany without any
money. But before that he wrote about
the Hutterites. That’s a deeply religious
group now based in North America, like
the Amish.” Schmidt pauses to greet an
acquaintance. He runs a small company
that publishes magazines and has written
books about his life as a St Pauli fan, so
normally he is a good storyteller. But
now he has to interrupt his tale again and
again because there are many people to
greet. Because of the long summer break,
Schmidt hasn’t seen most of them for
months, which means there are opinions
to be shared and predictions to be made.
Uli Hesse »
10
“We are a promoted team and we are
playing a good side like Hoff enheim, so
you would have to say that we can live
with a point today,” he announces. “But
I think we’ll win. We’ll beat them 3-1.
Actually, I’m not at all worried about
the Bundesliga. There are many teams
worse than us. St Pauli should manage
to stay up.” The people sitting next to
him, among them his two young sons,
nod their heads in silent agreement and
drink more Guinness to that.
And the gates of hell? “Oh yes,” says
Schmidt and picks up where he left off .
“Holzach lived with the Hutterites for a
year and won their trust, because they
thought he wanted to join them. One
day they told him that they knew where
the gates of hell are. They’re right here,
they said, in St Pauli. The Hutterites are
convinced hell is directly underneath
the Reeperbahn.”
The Reeperbahn is a long, broad street
that once connected two independent,
walled cities — the Danish Altona and
the Hanseatic Hamburg. In its original
form, the street ran from Altona’s
Nobistor gate to Hamburg’s Millerntor
gate, after which St Pauli’s stadium is
now named. The ground in between
was a no man’s land, the place
Hamburg sent all the people the city
didn’t want within its walls: thieves and
crooks, hookers and gypsies, lowlives
and lepers. They were eventually joined
by sailors from the nearby harbour,
some of whom would almost certainly
have been the sons or grandsons of
real-life pirates. This motley crew
settled around the Reeperbahn, which
is how St Pauli came into being. And,
more than a few people will add, how
it still is.
Ever since the Beatles turned into the
tight and fearless band that would later
rule the world by playing the Star Club,
just off the Reeperbahn, night after night,
it has become a cliché that this is a place
where young men grow up fast, a place
peopled by pimps, dealers, fl oozies and
bizarre characters. But the cliché can’t
be that far off the mark, because all you
have to do in today’s St Pauli is stumble
down a few stairs into a dimly-lit room
— and suddenly you are face to face
with one of those characters, a one-off
named Heini.
Heini was once known as Butcher Heini,
because his day job was slitting animals’
throats in an abattoir. But since his feet
and fi sts used to be as quick as his knife,
Heini was Hamburg’s middleweight
boxing champion for three years running
in the late 1950s. Which is why, in those
glorious days, he travelled through
Europe a lot, particularly Sweden, and
was well-connected in the St Pauli
underworld. Today his gait is uneven, his
fi ngers have stiff ened and his speech is
slurred. But his mind is still clear. He has
run a pub not far from the Shamrock
since 1978. Even though he is a local boy
born before they built the bunker and has
always been a St Pauli fan, he predicts
a loss against Hoff enheim and wouldn’t
mind relegation at all.
“Business is better in the second division,”
he explains. “People drink more when
St Pauli have won, so for me, winning
in the second division is better than
losing in the fi rst.” Heini can only ever
watch the fi rst 45 minutes of a home
game, because he has to walk over to
his pub at half-time and prepare the
beer taps for many thirsty throats. But
he has been following St Pauli for longer
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
11
than almost anyone else you meet in
the neighbourhood. When you ask him
about the past, though, he says: “Which
past?” Well, the days before the pirate
fl ags. “You mean the 1970s and earlier?
But there was nothing!” Pouring akvavit,
he shakes his head and repeats: “There
was nothing.”
Heini’s judgement sounds harsh when
you consider that St Pauli had a team
in the years immediately following the
war that is now known as the Miracle
XI. There were a few times when they
almost reached the semi-fi nals of
the national championships in those
pre-Bundesliga days. But they call this
side a miracle team precisely because
its exploits were unexpected and are
without parallel in the club’s long history.
A history that now covers 100 years.
Which is why St Pauli, which knows
no shortage of strange sights to begin
with, currently off ers visitors an unusual
attraction. On the square in front of
the stadium’s main entrance, 46 rusty
shipping containers have been stacked,
like Lego pieces for giants. This rickety
pile is not a scrapheap. It hosts a
temporary exhibition to celebrate the
club’s centenary — St Pauli’s idea of a
museum. Inside those containers are
artefacts and stories from one hundred
years of football (and some other sports)
in St Pauli, but you won’t fi nd trophies
in here, because the club doesn’t have
any. And if you want to see lots of heavy
cotton shirts once worn by famous
players, black-and-white photos of
nights in Europe and newsreels about
homecoming heroes, well, then you have
to travel eight kilometres to the northwest,
where the big, rich and successful
Hamburger SV (HSV) reside.
HSV are usually referred to as St
Pauli’s fi erce city rivals, but that term
is misleading. Firstly, HSV are so much
bigger, have so much more money
and have won so many more titles
that the comparison is almost absurd.
Secondly, when you travel from St Pauli
to HSV you quickly realise that the latter
practically comes from a diff erent city.
HSV’s Hamburg is neatly groomed, leafy,
spacious and clean. It’s where people
play golf and tennis. It’s where the word
“harbour” means the marina, not that
dingy place down in St Pauli where
people work hard every day but never
seem to get out of debt.
Ah, but isn’t that another cliché that
seems a bit overdone, that of St Pauli —
the quarter and the club — as perennially
being on the verge of fi nancial collapse?
Thirty minutes before the Hoff enheim
game begins, the stadium announcer
coyly says: “If you are here for the fi rst
time, let me tell you that we are poorer
than most and need money. That’s why
you will now hear some advertising
announcements.” But they are building
some shiny glass-fronted offi ce buildings
down at the harbour and that will surely
bring money into the quarter, just like
being promoted to the Bundesliga brings
money into the football club’s coff ers,
what with better television money and
everything. Right?
Not necessarily so, no. Change — or
gentrifi cation, as sociologists call it
— may be on its way, but many people
here have the sneaking suspicion it
won’t be for the better. Down by the
new offi ce buildings an angry graffi to
reads “Our world doesn’t look like this”
and there are some people who think
this line also holds true for FC St Pauli
Uli Hesse »
12
and the Bundesliga. Like Heini, they have
economic reasons, though of a diff erent
kind. They fear that the club will be
forced to invest to stay up — and at this
club they know everything about what
can go wrong if you overspend.
This fi rst became a massive problem in
the 1970s, when only a few thousand
came to see the team in the second
division and the club still spent a fortune
to win promotion. It seemed to work, as
St Pauli made it to the Bundesliga for the
fi rst time in 1977, a few months before
the Sex Pistols released Never Mind
The Bollocks. But the team swiftly went
down again, by which time the club was
so heavily in debt that the German FA
revoked St Pauli’s license for professional
football. The club was demoted to the
third division. As the 1980s began, St
Pauli were playing amateur football
and you could almost literally count
the spectators during half-time. It may
have looked like the end — but it was
the beginning of the strangest and most
breath-taking transformation in the
history of German football. And it all
happened in the stands.
“We would go into the ground carrying
a large sports bag full of beer cans,”
remembers Dirk Matzke. “Back then, you
could do that easily, because no one was
searching you as you walked in. We went
there to party, to celebrate. We celebrated
ourselves. Football was our party.”
Dirk, who is in his mid-40s now, books
alternative rock bands for a small but
hip club in St Pauli. He is married with a
kid, the whole family has season tickets
for the seated area (“My mother-in-law
is from Munich, but even she is a big St
Pauli fan now”), and he hasn’t had a drop
of alcohol in four years. But things were
very diff erent in the early 1980s, when
Dirk and his friends belonged to one of
the two groups that would change FC
St Pauli. It’s the group you only rarely
hear about when St Pauli’s story is told:
young, adventurous and sometimes
rowdy HSV fans, who enjoyed relaxing
at the Millerntor on the day after an HSV
game by drinking beer, watching lowlevel
football and not having to worry
about crews and fi rms.
Dirk even went to the European Cup
fi nal between Hamburg and Juventus in
Athens in 1983, together with a friend
who’s now working for HSV. “Eventually,
I left and he stayed,” says Dirk, wolfi ng
down a very late lunch in the club where
he works. This club, called Knust, is also
near the ground — because everything
in St Pauli is somehow near the football
ground. There are dozens of team
shirts on the walls, from the 1980s
right through to the present, and also
the skull-and-crossbones fl ag which
everybody now associates with St Pauli
but which wasn’t there when Dirk fi rst
smuggled beer into the ground.
“I left because the right-wing element
at HSV became sickeningly strong and
the club wasn’t doing anything about it,”
Dirk explains. “Those fascists viewed me
with suspicion, because I regularly went
to punk and ska concerts in St Pauli.
They gave me a hard time and so I fi nally
decided to avoid the hassle. I joined St
Pauli full time, because there was never
any trouble here. And also because ...”
Dirk looks up from his dish and glances
over to the men in St Pauli sweaters,
black hoodies or jeans jackets who sit
at the bar, “because St Pauli is a family.
They say people from Hamburg are very
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
13
reserved, but that’s not the case in St
Pauli. This was and is a family you can
join very easily.”
Having fi nished his meal, Dirk leaves
Knust, turns right at the bunker
and heads for what he and almost
everybody else regards as FC St Pauli’s
nerve centre, the true home of the club.
This is the Fanladen, which of course is
only a brisk walk away from the ground.
The name translates as ‘fan store’ but
the place must not be confused with
the Fan Shop, which is where the club
sells merchandise.
The Fanladen was set up twenty years
ago by dedicated St Pauli supporters to
help other fans with whatever problems
young people in a poor neighbourhood
will encounter. It was social work in all
but name and, logically enough, today
the Fanladen is supported by Hamburg’s
department of youth services and an
independent association. Like the club
the Fanladen is always short of money,
which is why they sell self-designed St
Pauli t-shirts here to raise cash. The shirts
don’t bear any offi cial logos, but they are
very popular because they are stylish,
funny and often based on iconography
used by punk bands.
Outside the Fanladen a man is rolling a
cigarette, a bottle of beer stuck under
his arm. Roger Hasenbein is in his early
50s, yet he is wearing leather pants,
which immediately tells you he is a social
worker. However, that’s only one reason
why he’s often here. The other reason
is that he is also a member of FC St
Pauli’s supervisory board, which means
he knows, well, almost everything.
He knows the players’ contracts and
their wages and to whom the general
manager has made an off er and what the
club is planning to do.
Nobody would have expected that when
Hasenbein arrived in St Pauli more than
a quarter of a century ago. He came as
a member of the second group which
changed the club: men and women of
such strong political convictions that they
felt it was their moral duty to defend eight
19th-century houses down at the harbour
against the police and neo-Nazis.
Of course it wasn’t really about the
buildings; it was a matter of principle.
In 1981, those four- and fi ve-storeyhouses
in Hafenstrasse were untenanted
because the city wanted to knock them
down and replace them with expensive
apartment buildings. This attracted punk
rockers and students looking for cheap
places to stay. Soon the houses were
home to radical squatters and whenever
the police moved in to evict them, all hell
broke loose and the raids usually ended
in street-battles.
The 1980s were such a heavily politicised
decade in West Germany that the
Hafenstrasse houses quickly became
not just a symbol for anarchist and
leftist resistance against a supposedly
inhumane state, but also a focal point
for all the liberals who would make
the Green Party a political force to be
reckoned with. But of course the houses
also attracted the opposite end of the
political spectrum. Soon fascists and
right-wing hooligans from all over West
Germany came to St Pauli to attack the
squatters, whereupon members of the
counterculture like Roger Hasenbein
arrived from all parts of the country
to defend them. When the media
portrayed Hafenstrasse as a “legal black
Uli Hesse »
14
hole” where chaos reigned, even more
people travelled to St Pauli — curious
onlookers thrilled by the danger and the
strangeness. It was bedlam.
But you cannot fi ght the enemy and
save the world 24 hours a day. Even
revolutionaries occasionally need
diversion and some good clean fun. “I
have been playing football since I was six
years old and still do, for St Pauli oldtimers,”
says Hasenbein, leaning against
the doorframe and facing the street,
as you’re not allowed to smoke in the
Fanladen. (Drinking beer is encouraged,
though, as a few cents from every bottle
sold go to the Fanladen support fund.)
“I grew up an FC Köln fan, because
that’s where I’m from. At the beginning
of the 1980s, I had a job in Heidelberg,
as a social worker, but I often came to
Hamburg because of the Hafenstrasse.
Naturally, I’d also go and see FC St Pauli
play. I immediately liked it. And that’s why
I’m still here today.”
Slowly, but steadily, word about the
cool new scene down at the Millerntor
spread and more and more people like
Matzke and Hasenbein went to see the
team. They formed a football crowd
like no other, combining a love of loud
music with serious politics and a wicked
sense of humour. During the fi rst weeks
of the 1986-87 season, when St Pauli
had just been promoted back to the
second division, one fan raised his fi st
and yelled “Never again war, never
again fascism!” Whereupon someone
added: “And never again third division!”
(Unfortunately, not every one of those
demands could be fulfi lled.)
It was in that same season, probably in
March 1987, that the former singer of
one of Hamburg’s earliest punk bands
passed through the Dom to get to
the stadium (the Dom is a funfair held
three times a year right next to the
ground, in the shadow of the bunker).
In all likelihood, the man known as Doc
Mabuse was drunk when he spotted a
stall selling pirate fl ags for kids. In any
case, he grabbed the fl ag and walked
on. (These days, he sometimes claims
he paid for the fl ag, but that would have
been out of character.) The skull-andcrossbones
image had always been
popular in Hamburg, the hometown of
Germany’s most famous pirate, Klaus
Störtebeker. And it had also been used
by the Hafenstrasse squatters to tell the
world they didn’t feel bound by state
law. So it was probably just a matter of
time until someone took such a fl ag to
a football game. Still, credit where it’s
due — Doc Mabuse’s inspired act gave
the wild bunch that gathered in the St
Pauli stands the one thing they had so far
lacked: a visual sign to rally behind.
A few months after Doc Mabuse had
introduced the fl ag to the Millerntor
ground, St Pauli’s coach Willi Reimann
left because he had received the kind
of off er you can’t refuse: one from HSV.
The club simply promoted the assistant
coach, a tall, gangly man only 30 years
of age, Helmut Schulte. Under Schulte,
the team unexpectedly won promotion
to the Bundesliga, and this time it
was very diff erent from the club’s fi rst
stay in the top fl ight ten years earlier.
No matter where St Pauli travelled in
1987-88, there were local people in the
stands who didn’t support the home
side but cheered the visitors. FC St
Pauli had become hip and attractive
for anyone connected with the cultural
underground. St Pauli was the team it
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
15
was both politically correct and great
fun to like. In other words, the club now
had the one thing that is really and truly
priceless, because no amount of money
can buy it. FC St Pauli had an identity.
More than two decades after those
events, Helmut Schulte is slightly
irritated. He moves back and forth
on the heels of his shiny, expensive
shoes. He stares at the fl oor, then at the
wall, then at the fl oor again. He paces
to his right to whisper something in
somebody’s ear, then saunters back.
He exchanges a few words with a very
tall, unshaven and slightly unkempt
man by the name of Sven Brux, who
looks like someone who runs a secondhand
record store and drinks too much
coff ee, but is in fact FC St Pauli’s head of
security. Then Schulte stares at the fl oor
some more.
At the opposite end of the small room,
Hoff enheim’s coach Ralf Rangnick is
saying that his team was lucky to win
the game 1-0. St Pauli’s coach Holger
Stanislawski is saying that his team played
well and made just one mistake at a setpiece
late in the game. The journalists,
many of whom have to stand because
there are not enough seats, ask a lot of
questions, addressing Rangnick as “Mister
Rangnick” and Stanislawski as “Stani”.
Rangnick says the Millerntor pitch is in
a bad shape, probably because — as he
was told — it has been recently used
for a game between fans. “I guess that
wouldn’t be possible anywhere but here,
where they have a special relationship
with their fans,” Rangnick adds, looking
like a schoolteacher who tries to be
tolerant and forgiving even though he
cannot understand the kids of today.
Schulte and Brux shake their heads
simultaneously. “That’s not true,”
Brux says in a low voice. He adds,
louder: “It was sponsors, not fans!”
Stanislawski leans forward to speak
into the microphone: “I’m sorry, that
was my mistake. I told Ralf it was a
game between fans, but it was a game
organised by sponsors.” He grins
mischievously. “Fans, sponsors — that’s
all the same here, isn’t it?”
When, at last, there are no more
questions and the two coaches rise
from their seats, Schulte quickly opens
the glass door to a long corridor, steps
inside, closes the door and takes a deep
breath. The glass must be sound-proof,
because all of a sudden it’s very quiet.
Schulte walks towards his offi ce, now
relaxed and calm. It seems as if his
irritation in the press room had nothing
to do with the fact St Pauli have lost,
rather with the noise made by more
journalists than this place has ever seen
before and the bustle of the countless
cameramen who have covered this
Saturday evening game. It has been a
long and taxing day for the man who is
now St Pauli’s general manager and is
thus responsible for fi nances.
The Hoff enheim match wasn’t just St
Pauli’s fi rst home game after promotion,
it was also the fi rst game played in
front of the new, rebuilt main stand.
The club came under criticism from
some hardcore fans when it began
to modernise the ground and added
luxury boxes for wealthier fans and
sponsors. (With typical St Pauli humour,
the luxury boxes are offi cially known
as “Séparées”, which is the Reeperbahn
expression for rooms where prostitutes
conduct business.) In April, Ballesterer
Uli Hesse »
16
even reported that some old supporters,
among them Doc Mabuse, had left St
Pauli for fi fth-division Altona, because
they feel there’s now too much
commercialism at the Millerntor. German
television then picked up the story and
confronted Holger Stanislawki with
it when the St Pauli coach appeared
on a sports show after his team had
won the opening game of the season,
away at Freiburg. “It’s not always easy,”
Stanislawski replied, “to walk the thin line
between doing what is economically
necessary to be competitive and
preserving the charm of a club that has
very close ties to the quarter. We now
have two new stands, but those fans who
thrive on the atmosphere of decay can
still use the old stands.”
At the end of a very long day, Schulte is
trying not to waste too many words on
this subject, just saying that, “it’s strange
how this is made into a story when
we’re talking about only 40 people or so
who are unhappy and have left”. (René
Martens, the club’s premier historian,
who also knows the Altona scene very
well, argues: “It’s not 40 people. It’s 15 at
the most. And they’re only making room
for others. There are so many people
who are eager to go to the Millerntor but
can’t because it’s always sold out.”) And
Schulte really doesn’t have to defend his
club. Not on this day. Not when St Pauli
have just played Hoff enheim — a team
from a tiny village that is bankrolled by
a billionaire and plays in a brand-new
stadium that isn’t even in Hoff enheim.
“Luckily enough, I was here to experience
it fi rst-hand when FC St Pauli grew into
what it is now,” says Schulte. “There
was nobody who drew up a marketing
plan and said this is what we should
become.” He is fully aware that this
was an enormous stroke of luck. In the
decade during which St Pauli changed
and acquired a unique identity, there
were quite a few so-called “second
teams” from larger cities doing quite well
in German football: 1860 Munich, Kickers
Stuttgart, Fortuna Köln, Blau-Weiss 90
Berlin. They are all in a very sorry state
today, at best poor cousins, at worst
just a memory. Not so St Pauli. “When
you are the second club in a city,” says
Schulte, “you cannot just try to duplicate
the fi rst club. It’ll never work.” You’ll lose
your identity, and even though they have
lost many things in St Pauli over the years,
usually money, this is one thing they
haven’t lost. “It developed organically,”
says Schulte, looking back, adding: “That
is how we have become a brand.”
A brand is certainly what is at sale
downstairs, below Schulte’s offi ce.
The game is long over, but the fan
shop — which mustn’t be and cannot
be confused with the Fanladen — is
jammed with men, women and children
buying offi cial club merchandise, most
of which prominently features the skull
and crossbones. It is now the offi cial club
logo and was trademarked a few years
back, which should earn St Pauli good
money. But it doesn’t.
“This club could be rich, you know,” says
Dirk Matzke, exaggerating for eff ect. He
is walking through St Pauli shoulder to
shoulder with Roger Hasenbein, who is
pushing his bike and smoking another
self-rolled cigarette. The two encounter
many fans in club shirts and sweaters
and Matzke points to the logo. “But St
Pauli gets only ten percent of the profi t
made from all that merchandise. And
this won’t change for many years to
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
17
come!” Hasenbein, the member of the
club’s supervisory board, raises a hand.
“Unless we win the lawsuit,” he modifi es
Matzke’s statement.
Ten years ago, FC St Pauli sold half
of their marketing and half of their
merchandising rights to a Hamburg event
agency by the name of Upsolut. Four
years later, the deal was renegotiated
because the club realised it needed the
marketing rights back. But to achieve
this, St Pauli had to grant Upsolut another
40 per cent of the merchandising rights
for no less than thirty years. It is this
unusually long duration of the contract
that gives the club some hope. The
lawsuit Hasenbein mentions was fi led in
October 2009, citing unconscionability.
The outcome is unclear, though, because
Upsolut has since been bought by
Lagadrère, a huge French media group
that has the power and the fi nancial
means to see this through to the bitter
end and probably will do so. After all,
every skull and crossbones on a black
hoody and every display of the (smart)
club motto “Non established since 1910”
means cold, hard money in a bank
somewhere in Paris.
Which begs the question: why did St
Pauli commit such a folly? Why did the
club more or less throw away the right
to profi t from a good part of its identity?
Well, it’s simple — the rights were
sold at a time when St Pauli was once
again so desperate for cash it needed
every cent just to stay alive. While the
fans outperformed all their rivals, the
club’s offi cials just couldn’t handle the
fi nances and led the club to the brink of
bankruptcy yet again. It was almost as if
St Pauli had been catapulted back to the
late 1970s. The team was even playing
in the third division again, having been
relegated from the Bundesliga in 2002
and then from the Second Bundesliga
in 2003. FC St Pauli needed another
miracle — and once against it happened
off the pitch.
In late 2003, the club’s members made
Cornelius “Corny” Littmann, the owner
of a theatre on Reeperbahn, St Pauli’s
new president. Littmann was outspoken,
funny, fl amboyant and openly gay. The
rest of Germany treated his election
as further proof — as if it had been
needed — that St Pauli did things
diff erently and always went for the
unexpected and crazy. Many observers
also recalled that Littmann had once
taken part in a television debate about
homosexuality in sports, during which
the former Köln defender Paul Steiner
said that gays were too soft to play
professional football. Whereupon
Littmann deadpanned he’d had sex with
footballers, including one of Steiner’s
former team-mates. And this guy was
now a club president — whoa!
What the rest of Germany failed to
understand was that Littmann was fi rst
and foremost a shrewd businessman.
Not for nothing had he been voted
Hamburg’s Entrepreneur of the Year in
1999. Some of the things he did over
the next years have served to make him
a controversial fi gure among the purist
fans, such as the Upsolut deal and the
idea of selling the naming rights to the
ground. (“I tried to fi nd a sponsor whose
name would fi t,” Littmann said. “I quite
fancied Poker Room; that would have
been my kind of humour.”) But he did
manage to turn things around. With
more than a little help from the club’s
many friends.
Uli Hesse »
18
Because the worse the situation became,
the more people sprang into action to
help. The club off ered lifetime seasontickets
and people bought them. The
club printed shirts that simply said
“Retter” (saviour) on the front, and
40 McDonald’s stores in Hamburg
agreed to help sell them. The shirts
proved extremely popular, as seemingly
everybody wanted to announce that he
had played a part in saving the club.
At the same time, pub owners in St Pauli
added 50 cents to the price for a beer,
promised the extra profi t would go to
the club and urged customers to “Booze
for Pauli”. In the red-light district, some
prostitutes followed this example by
increasing their fees and telling punters
to, well, also do something for the club.
Even the hated Bayern Munich played
their part and organised a friendly
between the two teams to raise money.
Somehow it all worked out and FC St
Pauli were saved a second time. And
as usual, surviving a crisis made them
stronger. Those diffi cult years helped forge
an even closer bond between the club, the
quarter and the people who live here.
“We fi nally have professionals working
for us in the various departments,” says
Roger Hasenbein. “They are not St
Paulians, but that’s okay; they are here
to do a job. They will never become
St Paulians, because they will never
understand what this is all about.”
That may sound strange coming from
someone who was born in Cologne,
but Hasenbein has been in living in St
Pauli for so long now that he’s almost
become one with the place. “The quarter
is there for the club,” he says, “and the
club is there for the quarter. This close
connection is absolutely essential.”
It is why the members have elected
Hasenbein, a former fans’ spokesman,
on to the supervisory board. His task
to is prevent the club from coming up
with silly ideas that could alienate the
fans. Such as Littmann’s plan to sell the
naming rights to the ground, a scheme
that caused uproar among the support
and was eventually vetoed by the club’s
members. These days, the most important
club representatives (Littmann stepped
down in May) seem to understand this
and are, to use Hasenbein’s defi nition,
“St Paulians” even if they come from
Westphalia, like Schulte, who returned to
St Pauli in 2008.
“I spent ten years at Schalke,” he says,
“but there was never any doubt that
I would one day come back here. I
understand St Pauli and all that comes
with it. I know what the Millerntor means
and conveys. I know that it is sacrosanct.
St Pauli is an experience — and you must
treat it with the utmost care.”
Which makes you wonder if “all that
comes with St Pauli” isn’t almost more
important than the actual football. In
every other German city, this would
have been a day of great celebration and
excitement — the fi rst home game back
in the Bundesliga after many years. But
in this quarter, where a famous graffi to
says “St Pauli is the only option”, it
seems promotion is of almost secondary
importance. Of course it’s great and
lucrative fi nally to play against all those
famous teams again, but fi nances and
fame have never been what St Pauli is all
about. “You have to have a philosophy,” is
how Schulte puts it. “If you say you want
to win, so that you’ll earn more money
to buy more players who will then help
you to win some more... well, that is
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
19
not enough.” That is not enough in St
Pauli, he means, where it’s not really that
important in which league you play. The
most important subject among the fans
after the end of the Hoff enheim game
was not the result, but how the South
Stand had problems interacting with the
new main stand. (“It wasn’t as it used to
be,” said René Martens, “but maybe that
will come with time.”)
And outside a famous fans’ pub called
Jolly Roger, the atmosphere is almost
jolly an hour after St Pauli have lost
the game. Hundreds of people mill
about outside, drinking beer and talking
about upcoming gigs rather than the
90 minutes just past. There is a slight
commotion when some members
of St Pauli’s ultras object to being
photographed. They say you never know
where the pictures end up and some
right-wing HSV hooligans search the
internet for pictures of their enemies.
But in general the atmosphere outside
the pub is so relaxed, so devoid of
disappointment, that it seems winning
or losing, playing in the second or the
fi rst division is really not what it’s all
about. “Of course all that other stuff is
more important,” says Roger Hasenbein,
searching his jacket for the tobacco. “I
would be a St Pauli fan even if the club
stopped playing football tomorrow.”
“They’d rather be playing in the second
division?” Hermann Schmidt, the
seasoned fan with the Gates of Hell story,
is stunned when he hears that people like
Heini (and also Dirk Matzke) think St Pauli
would be better off in a lower league.
“Only people who have never played
the game can say things like that. As a
footballer, you want to play at the highest
possible level.” Despite his age, Schmidt
is not at all given to nostalgia. “Those
people who romanticise the 1980s have
forgotten how bad the football was. It
was terrible, much worse than today.
Today we’ve got quite a few boys who
can really play.”
Those players have almost all come
cheap; even St Pauli’s most prominent
player joined on a free transfer. That
man is the former Germany international
Gerald Asamoah, who misses the
Hoff enheim game through injury. It’s
probably the most spectacular transfer
St Pauli have ever made, but at the same
time it’s much less spectacular than it
seems. Asamoah is nearing the end of
his career and was no longer wanted
at his previous club, Schalke. What’s
more, Asamoah seems to go well with St
Pauli. Not so much because he, a black
player, has openly criticised right-wing
tendencies at some clubs from the
former East Germany. (There’s often
trouble when FC St Pauli plays one of
those teams.) Rather, it’s because of his
outgoing personality — and his humour.
In August, a German magazine asked
one player from each club to take part
in a phone-in so that fans could call and
ask a question. The St Pauli player was
the striker Marius Ebbers and one of the
fi rst callers said: “Hi, this is Gerald from
Hamburg. What do you think about St
Pauli’s new signings?” (Ebbers recognised
the voice, though.)
Yes, it takes a special breed of player
to play here. After all, only very few
footballers can be such perfect St Pauli
material as the legendary Volker Ippig,
the 1980s goalkeeper who helped build
a hospital in Nicaragua and lived in a
Hafenstrasse squat for a while. “Most
Uli Hesse »
20
players have no idea what’s waiting for
them when they sign for St Pauli,” says
Matzke. And even though Hermann
Schmidt thinks that “they learn very fast,
because they have to”, this aspect of the
St Pauli experience doesn’t make the
general manager’s job easier.
“When we scout players, we look for
footballing things fi rst,” says Helmut
Schulte, “but we also look at the
personality. Our players have to be open
and tolerant, they have to approach the
fans.” That’s putting it mildly. When a
player signs for St Pauli, he is not exactly
forced to DJ down at Knust, which some
players have done, but if he expects
to live in a nice villa in the posh part of
town, drive a Porsche to training and
communicate with people only via his
agent, he’ll be gone within a month, no
matter how many goals he scores.
This is a club where the training ground
is not closed off and not protected by
security, because people are encouraged
to come, watch and then ask the players
why the they played the way they did on
Saturday. And so Schulte says about new
signings: “It really helps if a player has
spent some time in Germany and knows a
little bit about us, so that he is prepared.”
This seriously limits St Pauli’s catchment
area. Because where, outside of
Germany, can you fi nd players who won’t
suff er a culture shock when they see all
this? Where can you fi nd players who
may actually like the rapport with the
fans, not to mention the pirate fl ags and
the punk rock and the politics? “Sweden,”
says Schulte. “We have spent the past
year collecting information about
Sweden and we’re now scouting this and
some other Scandinavian countries. We
think that the mentality is comparable and
we hope that Swedish players will learn
the language more quickly.” In case you’re
a professional footballer currently looking
for a job: what Schulte means is that you
are supposed to learn German so that you
can talk to the fans, not the media.
At the Millerntor, the fans are indeed
given special consideration, and not just
those wearing the skull and crossbones.
Over at the Knust, Dirk Matzke had
insisted that “the club doesn’t do
that much for the fans. This is now a
club like any other. St Pauli is a totally
normal club.” But it’s not normal that
the stadium PA plays the Hoff enheim
club song twenty minutes from kick-off
to welcome the travelling fans. It’s not
normal that even the people who have
tickets for the expensive business seats
are handed a leafl et that reminds them
to respect the opposition. And it’s not
normal that, fi fteen minutes before kickoff
, the stadium PA is turned off .
At St Pauli, they refrain from playing music
or advertisements during this quarter of
an hour so that the fans can sing their
songs undisturbed. Songs such as “No
one wins at the Millerntor,” meaning that
even if the visiting team should happen to
score more goals than the home side, FC
St Pauli will never be defeated, can never
be destroyed. Hearing that song reminds
you of the bunker that towers over the
North Stand. And as you cast a casual
glance over to that concrete monster ...
you freeze and don’t trust your eyes.
The fi gure of a man dressed all in black
has appeared on the roof of the bunker.
Behind him, storm clouds are forming
in the distance and the light changes
constantly, so you can only make out
» The Conversion of St Pauli?
21
his silhouette. Slowly, he unfurls a large
black fl ag. He begins to wave the fl ag
almost at the exact moment when the PA
plays those ominous bells that introduce
the AC/DC song which indicates the
players are coming. The man on the roof
will later be joined by a second shadowy
fi gure, dressed in what from this distance
looks like a striped football shirt and
waving a red fl ag. They stay up there for
the whole game.
The bunker, that monstrous monument,
is now home to musicians, artists and
media people. There’s a radio station in
the building and a nightclub, on the fi fth
fl oor, which is renowned for cool parties.
There’s a big store that sells drums and
guitars and a dancing school. Like they
did with the football club, the people
have taken over something that was ugly,
hopeless and unloved and have turned
it into something vibrant, unique and
strangely attractive. And there’s really
no answer to the question if that is cool
and crazy or crass and commercial — or
actually fairly normal. Because it’s all
of these things at the same time. What
else would you expect of a place that
is named after a church for Paul the
Apostle but rises above the gates of hell?
“Well, I don’t know what else I can tell
you,” says Hermann Schmidt and empties
his glass. Then he gives one of his sons
some money so that he can buy another
round of Guinness. “Are you going to the
game?” he asks. I nod my head. “Actually,
it’s a fi rst for me,” I say. “I’ve never seen a
game here before.” Schmidt smiles and
says: “Well, that means that today is
the day you become a St Pauli fan.”

 

[Keitanz]

£1.7 million gate revenue per home game, anywhere from £250,000-£500,000 TV revenue per game. A good run in Europa league pays the wages of 3 top players for a year, Liverpool need the income but also they need to offer something to new players they are trying to sign, whilst it is no CL it is still football of a level that many players have not played at and some top players would settle for a year until CL qualification can be gained.

I just don't think the distraction is worth it, without it Liverpool can focus on the more important trophies and the league.

But yeah, you are right that players would prefer it if we were in a European competition..

 

[megadave]

Surely if you managed to get back in to the Champion's League next year you'll end up struggling in that ? Best to be prepared.

Chodax is right, if you read the latest The Swiss Ramble about Liverpool then you'll see it's going be a considerable struggle to finance a team capable of reclaiming a European spot.

 

[Cerb]

Bar the league what other trophy is more important?

Haha you sound like a child saying he doesn't want an ice-cream anyways after he's been told he can't have it.

 

[tierk]

I just don't think the distraction is worth it..

Sorry but as much as i can understand the logic of what you are saying, i would prefer we where in Europe than out.

The only trophy worth talking about outside of the PL is the CL or the whatever-its-called-now-cup.

 

[Keitanz]

I value the FA Cup and even the League Cup way higher than the Europa League, the Europa league is a complete joke really.

mehhhh

 

[eksdee]

I read a few articles of the first issue (downloaded it for £1) I'm sure I heard about it through a guardian podcast months back in fact. Was pretty good, very long articles that go into depth, well written and researched. Only problem for me is that I couldn't have cared less about the subjects of a few articles.

Yeah, it certainly has a somewhat limited appeal, I'm certain within that sub-set though. Going to get issue one when I get home and have a read.

£30 for four episodes is a bit steep! I'd have subscribed to it if it was a more reasonable price.

It may seem that way, but think of it more as a journal than a magazine - as Dave said the articles are long and a friend who received his copy of issue one today said it is immaculately produced - or 'beautiful' as he put it. I think when you put it in the context that most people are happy to pay £1 for a newspaper, around £6 for a monthly magazine, a quarterly journal for £10 seems quite reasonable to me? Also consider the extremely high quality of writers on board for it, it's pretty much a who's who of the top thinkers in football writing right now - Wilson, Honnigstein, Cox, Marcotti, Brassel and loads more, some I haven't heard of but I presume by the quality of the other writers that they're of a similarly high standard.

Maybe I'm just drawn in by the uniqueness of it/how nice it looks! Ha.

 

[Ch3tan]

I'm going to read more of issue zero and then think about it. The re-occurring sub works out a lot cheaper, £5 per issue.

As for Europa league, while I can understand a club like Fulham not wanting the drain on their league games due to squad size, a club like Liverpool has more than enough players and can blood young players until the get to the harder games.

 

[megadave]

woooo more stelling on sky sports

Countdown hunts for new presenter after Jeff Stelling quits | Media | guardian.co.uk

 

[Vasconcelos]

ManU signed one of the best goalkeepers of the next decade.

Mark my words.

 

[megadave]

yeah sucks

quite expensive for a goalie

 

[gohan]

Can't believe Owen is moaning about not getting called up for England. He's the one who moved to a club where he knows he'll get a handful of starts a season, fucking moron scouser. Michael Owen hits out at Fabio Capello for his England exile | Football | The Guardian

i dont think he's talking about this season tho, he hasnt palyed for england for over 3 years and his last game was a meaningless freindly which he payed 45 mins, capello just doesn't like him, even when he was scoring goals and playing regualy at newcastle he didn't get near the england squad


he was 27 when he palyed his last competative game for england

 

[Ch3tan]

The dude is awesome, he should be the front of all their footy stuff. Msot naturally funny presenter I've seen on TV.

 

[Vasconcelos]

yeah sucks

quite expensive for a goalie

How much finally?

 

[megadave]

James Richardson is the don at football presenting, he should really be doing match of the day with two presenters who aren't as insightful as a empty cup of tea ala Shearer and Hanson.

i dont think he's talking about this season tho, he hasnt palyed for england for over 3 years and his last game was a meaningless freindly which he payed 45 mins, capello just doesn't like him, even when he was scoring goals and playing regualy at newcastle he didn't get near the england squad


he was 27 when he palyed his last competative game for england

He was shit at Newcastle though, he's not been good enough to get a call up for at least 3 years.

 

[Ch3tan]

£17 million apparently, but it's not a done deal. All Fergie has said is that they are close to completing a deal. Apparently the clause in his contract allows him to talk to any club, but that club then has to meet the release fee in his contract, rumoured to be over £20million.

 

[megadave]

i dont think he's talking about this season tho, he hasnt palyed for england for over 3 years and his last game was a meaningless freindly which he payed 45 mins, capello just doesn't like him, even when he was scoring goals and playing regualy at newcastle he didn't get near the england squad


he was 27 when he palyed his last competative game for england

He's also not been good for three years and never deserved a call up. He was a joke at Newcastle.

How much finally?

£18m is what the English press are saying, pretty decent by today's standards I guess.

wtf replying to vasconcelos edited my previous response to gohan and deleted it?

 

[Vasconcelos]

18m?

Sounds fair.

Trsut me, David is gonna make you forget VDS.

hell!! He even looks like VDS' own son!!

 

[Everz]

Wth happened to Asenjo!?

 

[soze]

Blackburn Rovers Season Ticket 2011/2012 Season in the Premier League @ Ewood Park for just £225 - HotUKDeals

Wow 5 games at the Grove will get you a season ticket at Ewood Park

 

[gohan]

He's also not been good for three years and never deserved a call up. He was a joke at Newcastle.


£18m is what the English press are saying, pretty decent by today's standards I guess.

wtf replying to vasconcelos edited my previous response to gohan and deleted it?

he wasnt shit at newcastle his strike ratio was still good, not as good as at liverpool or RM but still good, just newcastle were fucking shit at the time

 

[Ch3tan]

18m?

Sounds fair.

Trsut me, David is gonna make you forget VDS.

hell!! He even looks like VDS' own son!!

With him, Lindegaard and Amos, we have a ridiculous selection of keepers. Feel sorry for Kusaczk, but he should be a regular at a smaller team, he'll never be top choice for us.

 

[Corran]

yeah sucks

quite expensive for a goalie

If you keep him for 20 years then it works out rather cheap

But it is a big layout to start with. Given that it be close to £20m if all goes through. (depending on exchange rate that they get)

 

[megadave]

Wth happened to Asenjo!?

Got injured i think, then De Gea was so good that he kept the #1 spot.