I do not follow German football myself, but I noticed this piece about RB Leipzig and it got me thinking. If you read the introduction it seems to be mostly about corporation ownership of a football team and how the ownership by Redbull is a danger to the existing German club system. But clearly it is also about the people/fans of Leipzig, a proud, former East German city.
The images of the yellow Dortmand fans do not suggest to me merely a management dispute about controlling interests in a company. Rather, it seems to suggest that Germany my not have digested the previous great unification in Europe: just as they push ahead with the new one. I'm not sure how well the East and West fits in 2017, and have not discussed the issue for years, assuming the two categories had no meaning anymore in Merkel's Germany.
Moving on, change the nation, and what do we have here? This all puts England's most hated football team into a perspective that I never gave any consideration to before. Millwall FC, somewhere, lost in South London. How did they ever rise to be understood by rival fans, and themselves, as the most hated team in English football? Mystery to me.
Get involved with AI says Starmer
3 hours ago
4 comments:
Well done RB Leipzig on all three counts!
"How did they ever rise to be understood by rival fans, and themselves, as the most hated team in English football?"
But are they, or is this just the image they wish to portray, living up to their chant, as it were?
There is quite a long standing argument in German Football about club ownership with a clear preference for their old system of clubs being 51% owned and controlled by the supporters .And quite right too as it is a system that has served them well with continued club success in Europe and ditto internationals.
The degraded British practice of pandering to shady big money has reduced English football to the point where they can't beat Iceland. Likewise the German economy never went over completely to the British market "system" and retained family owned Mittelschaft companies which are often very large and successful .And less in Germany of the wondrous hyperactive property market which has now bombed out in the UK even according to its enthusiastic proponents who have also bombed the country our of the single market with their usual matchless incompetence.(See Martin Wolf latest in FT).
We don't want to be like the Germans do we, all that prosperity and properly running institutions:just not British.
DBC,
'The degraded British practice of pandering to shady big money has reduced English football to the point where they can't beat Iceland'
True
Will check out 'Mittelschaft company'.
Bayard above. Must be the case, but why do they want the title in the first place? Thinking of a possible example close to a failed German unification(?)For Celtic fans Rangers are the most hated club I guess. But the secterian divide does not split the city of Liverpool. I don't think Everton and Liverpool were seen as soley Catholic or Prody in the post war period? Leeds were disliked for being cheats when they dominated in the 70s. Again Liverpool were not.As I say I am not a huge football fan so dont know all the ins and outs.
Post a Comment