Guten Tag Bundesliga! Soccer is Back
Soccer is back!
Sorry, but I have to call it soccer not football, having lived Stateside for the past 18 years. Either way, the round ball game returns to our airwaves on a glorious day that will go down in sporting lockdown history: Saturday, May 16, 2020.
Naturally, it’s the super-efficient Germans and not my fellow dithering Brits who have won the race to quench the thirst of those of us salivating for soccer. We’ve been starved of action since Europe’s premier leagues shut down back in March. The Bundesliga takes center stage at 9.30am ET a week from Saturday with a slate of fixtures streaming live.
So, the obvious question facing me now is: Who should I support?
I can’t support Bayern Munich. I just can’t. It riles me that there are so many ‘oh I’m not a glory hunter’ Manchester City fans across the United States whose numbers far outweigh those cheering for perhaps Bournemouth, Aston Villa or Southampton. It’s quite incredible that so many potential fans of the Maine Road club found a genuine reason to nail their flag to the City mast just at a time when the Citizens became perennial title challengers. They dodged the bullet of say an Everton or a Newcastle.
Myself, I’m a Villa fan, though I do admit to shunning my family’s team Birmingham City as a six-year-old when the kid sat next to me in class told me the Blues were rubbish and that I should become a Villa fan. The League Cup, First Division and European Cup (beating Bayern 1–0 in 1982) triumphs that followed suggest he was right!
I knew immediately the moment I decided to watch the Bundesliga which team I’d support, but let’s hold off on that for a minute. There are other options to dismiss first.
Borussia Dortmund? Nah, too obvious and too safe a bet. I glance admiringly in their direction and wonder if they’ll always serve as a feeder club for bigger fish, but they’re not for me. RB Leipzig are despised by German fans and others alike for their corporate climb to the top, so that rules them out for sure.
They key of course is to select a team that has a chance to challenge for honors and upset the mighty Bayern Munich, while avoiding relegation. Hmm…
I’ve been to Schalke 04’s stadium when it played host to NFL Europe American football games but have no reason to cheer for Die Knappen. I have a friend who is a Bayer fan, him being from Leverkusen, so all the more reason to become a rival than cheer alongside him.
The only German team I’ve seen play in person is Kaiserslauten, who suffered a 1–0 defeat at White Hart Lane in the UEFA Cup in 1999, courtesy of a harshly awarded penalty. They won the second leg 2–0 to knock Spurs out, but have since slid down to the obscurity of the third division.
I spent a lot of time working in Berlin, Frankfurt and Duesseldorf in the nineties and while I loved the ever-changing city of Berlin, 1 FC Union is too much of a cool pick to be considered. Their gritty climb from the fourth division is a compelling story and they’re the people’s team, but I’d feel like a middle-aged man trying to become a hipster by following the Iron Ones.
I remember the names Fortuna and Eintracht fondly from my time as a kid in the seventies and early eighties collecting Panini stickers, but they’re currently flirting with relegation and I already have enough of that on my plate with Villa seemingly heading towards obscurity. Besides, Eintracht’s fans can’t possibly rival the wall of noise created by the Frankfurt Galaxy faithful at the old Waldstadion back in the NFLE days.
It is indeed a memory from my childhood that decided my choice. Back in 1977, the ten-year-old me and friends competed to see who could not only pronounce but also spell the tongue-twister of all team names. Wrapping your lips around Borussia Mönchengladbach was not for the faint-hearted. The West German champions were to battle Liverpool in the European Cup Final (back when the Champions League was just that). I recall recognizing several of the Prussians’ players back then — Berti Vogts, Rainer Bonhoff, Uli Stielike, Jupp Heynckes and Allan Simonsen all being familiar faces from my valuable sticker books. I loved their classic plain all white kit too, with its distinctive green collar and cuffs.
So, for me, it’s the 2020 version of Borussia Mönchengladbach, a team now comprised of players from ten different nations compared with 1977 when Dane Simonsen was the only non-West German. They even have an American of sorts in Fabian Johnson, who is German born and bred, but qualified to play for the US Men’s National Team through his serviceman father.
I don’t know any of the songs sung by fans of The Foals, as the team is now nicknamed, and since few words rhyme with either Borussia or Mönchengladbach, I should probably hold off creating my own chants. My command of the German language is limited to ensuring I can get to the airport in a taxi and am furnished with a receipt, and to order beers in either full or half measures in increments of between one and ten. So, thankfully, the matches that air in the United States are being broadcast in English — well, Scottish — with the informative Derek Rae behind the microphone.
I’ll no doubt tune in when Arlo White, Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux return to the airwaves as the Premier League plays out its inevitable conclusion (Liverpool champions, Villa relegated), but for now, it’s Borussia Mönchengladbach for me. There are nine matches remaining to overhaul Bayern Munch, who are six points ahead of my fourth-placed boys. It all begins with an away trip to Eintracht Frankfurt on May 16. I can’t wait!
It’s unclear as to which channel among FOX, FOX Sports 1, FOX Soccer Plus, FOX Sports 2, Univision Deportes Network, UniMas, FOX Deportes, Sling Blue + Sports Extra, fuboTV, Hulu + Live TV and Vidgo will be broadcasting.
But either way, I’m very Mönchen glad that soccer is bach.
