“Goatbusters”, a reference to Bayer Leverkusen’s close neighbours and major rivals 1. FC Köln, whose symbol is the goat. The “Rheinderbies” are always hotly contested affairs and feature quite a bit of bad boy behaviour, the next one between these two sides coming up on the 13th of May – the penultimate weekend of the Bundesliga season!
A small gift given to me by Between Distances after his return from the Emerald Isle. I had to celebrate it on here!
Cliftonville F.C., founded in 1879, is Eire’s oldest Football Club and also the club with the oldest serving ground, “Solitude”. In Ulster, they are one of the very few professional clubs with a strong Republican following, making Belfast Derbies hot and Continue reading
Pogon Szczecin have something of a friendship with BFC Dynamo and have a lot of fans in Berlin, giving them a big presence in the Germany. These fans are pretty active. Check out our visit to Szczecin for a full report on Football across the Polish border. Spoiler alert: No Pyro No Party.
You’ve not made it as a city until a pop song has been written for you. New York. Paris. Amsterdam. Bangkok. Erm, Amarillo. This tradition exists among songwriters in other languages also. In German, the ballads are usually dedicated to the romance, excitement and hedonism of Berlin. It lends itself far better to poetry than, for example, Bremerhaven. But one unlikely German city has found itself subject of a modern smash-hit.
Rostock. The song Continue reading
You know the story. One of East Germany’s biggest “start-ups” now looks a challenger for the Bundesliga title, at time of writing. The story has drawn a different kind of foreign attention to the Bundesliga. Outsiders frequently acknowledge the excellency of the German Football experience, but now they are hearing more about the stark mainstream rejection of this story on behalf of fans. Why do Germans hate RB Leipzig so much? German society and culture play a big part. Continue reading
This time last year 1. FC Union Berlin hosted SV Austria Salzburg in a ‘charity match’ friendly with proceeds going to everyone’s favourite fan-owned club in the Mozart-Stadt. We were there for the game in the away end with the Salzbürger for what was a momentous occasion and a rowdy atmosphere during the customary January Bundesliga hiatus that makes every German Football loon twitchy. Some, so fed up of the lack Continue reading
It can be easy to forget Iraq’s diversity. Shia, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Working Class and Middle Class in a country that has suffered more than possibly any other in the past 40 years. Lines in the sand drawn by British officers around a century ago cut through historic communities and forced together ethnicities and peoples that Continue reading
It’s our birthday!
We’ve created a gallery of just some of the places we have been to through our Football Away Days over the past year where we have left our mark Continue reading
From Boothferry To Germany 