SC Victoria Hamburg v Condor Hamburg

"I've been watching Victoria for years. Make sure you enjoy the currywurst and beer as it will be a miracle if you enjoy the football."

SC Victoria Hamburg 3-3 Condor Hamburg. Stadion Hoheluft.
Thursday 24/03/16

No less an authority on debaucherous behaviour than John Lennon once said “I didn’t grow up in Liverpool, I grew up in Hamburg”. Before they were famous, The Beatles spent a lot of their time there, largely on the cities Reeperbahn which is known across Germany as the most sinful mile.

Sinful is the right way to describe it. It features a red light district, restaurants, back street bars, live music venues, theatres, brothels, strip clubs and sex shops. It isn’t hard to see why John, Paul George, Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe – this was pre-Ringo when the Fab Four were the Not-So-Fab-Five – had such a good time in Hamburg.

Hamburg Razvan Rathaus. A splendid building

The city isn’t just good for those looking for pursuits that would require a three figure number of Hail Marys in the confession booth on the return home. It is also a cracking place if you are on the lookout for football and it isn’t just about the cities two big teams, Hamburger SV and St Pauli. Dive into the fifth tier of the German pyramid and you find Oberliga Hamburg, a regional league based around Hamburg that feeds into the Regionalliga Nord.

That means you can go to Hamburg on virtually any weekend of the year and be able to find some form of football to watch. And on this particular Thursday night, that meant a trip to Stadion Hoheluft in a north eastern suburb of the city to catch a Hamburg derby between Victoria Hamburg and Condor Hamburg.

Herbertstrasse - part of that sinful mile

Victoria Hamburg have been going since 1895 with little success of note, bouncing between the fourth, fifth and sixth tiers. They do have some pedigree in the German Cup in the last decade however, having qualified and faced Bundesliga sides FC Nuremberg, Vfl Wolfsburg and Freiburg as well as pulling off a massive shock by defeating second tier Rot-Weiss Oberhausen in 2010.

But there was plenty to do in Hamburg prior to heading off to Stadion Hoheluft which naturally involved that most sinful mile for “cultural purposes”. Those cultural purposes were namely visiting St Pauli’s famous home, Millerntor-Stadion which is handily placed at one end of the Reeperbhan.

Some wonderful St Pauli grafitti

Millerntor-Stadion

Last time I visited Millerntor-Stadion was in 2010 when St Pauli were a Bundesliga side and Wolfsburg were in town. Back in those not-so-glory days when Steve McClaren was leading Die Wolfe, the Millerntor was halfway through a redevelopment with two shiny new stands featuring corporate boxes down one side and behind a goal. In the intervening five and a half years, the rest of the stadium has been completed and with it has gone the character of the crumbling terraces and old school stands. I am afraid that not even the famous anti-capitalist St Pauli have been able to avoid the lure of the corporate world and the money it brings in.

There wasn’t a lot going on at Millerntor on this quiet afternoon bar the bar being open and so after a hearty pint of Jever it was onto the Reeperbahn to sample a few (or seven) of the pubs this fantastic area of the city has to offer. Best of these was Zum Anker where, despite it being just 3pm on a Thursday a party was in full swing with loud 1980s music blaring out and women dancing as if it was 11pm on a Saturday.

That was too much for me, especially with a huge Hamburg derby to come and so it was off to Stadion Hoheluft. A 40 minute journey from the Reeperbhan via U-bahn and walk with the obligatory 10 minutes thrown in for getting lost left me arriving at the gates a matter of minutes before kick off. Or so I thought.

Stadion Hoheluft and it's old school turnstiles

Welcome to SC Victoria Hamburg 

If the man on the gate thought it was strange that someone was running up to him in an attempt to not miss the start despite there still being over an hour until kick off, then goodness knows what he thought when it turned out this man who was clearly unable to tell the time turned out to be English and wanting to part with an absolute bargain €9 to watch a German fifth tier game.

Arriving just the hour before kick off...

Standard German urinal fun and games

The communication breakdown that had made me one of the first people through the Hoheluft gates did have one upside however and that came in the shape of the stadium bar. Situated under the main (and only) stand, it was almost a pub in itself serving food, doing fantastic beer and featuring those wonderful gents urinals with a miniature football and goal which you can try and use your urine stream to score with. If the FA are genuinely looking for a way to mirror the German’s ruthlessness from six yards, then installing a set of these in every football ground in the country could be the way to go about it.

The Victoria ultras gathered in force behind the goal

There are far worse places to mistakenly arrive over an hour before kick-off and after putting away several more pints it was time to join the 203 other hardy souls on the terraces. Among those 203 were the ultras of both sides making as much of a racket as groups of approximately 15 people each can do. The Victoria hard-core support took their position on a small terrace behind one of the goals while the visiting Condor fans were on another small standing block next to the large main stand.

That main stand was elevated above a flat area and was home to everyone else in attendance bar a handful of folk who, like me, took up a tactical placing in front of it that allowed, a) quick and easy access back to the bar at half time, and b) a handy position next to the food cabin that was doing a roaring trade in excellent plates of currywurst. Just the two of those for me.

The wonderful old school main stand

Currywurst for €3? That's going straight in my basket

Opposite that was another uncovered terrace that ran the length of pitch but is only ever used when one of the big Bundesliga sides was in town. And judging from the comments of those around me, it will be some time before that happens again as despite Victoria sitting pretty in third spot in the league prior to this game, I was warned by one home supporter clearly channelling the spirit of Victor Meldrew that the game was likely to be schiesse as he questioned my sanity at being in attendance when there was plenty of other things to be getting on with in Hamburg. It wasn’t explicitly stated, but we both knew it was another reference to that mile of sin.

He’d dampened expectations nicely and it certainly looked like he had summed up his sides ability when after only four minutes that old maxim of “keep it tight in the opening exchanges” was thrown completely out of the window as Victoria’s perfectly named Torben Wacker decided to whack someone in the box, conceding a superb unnecessary penalty and allowing Alexander Krohn to give Condor the lead.

Victoria giving away a penalty after four minutes was a wonderful
start to proceedings

Needless to say, this didn’t please the German Mr Meldrew and neither did his side missing a succession of easy chances. The best thing about sinking to this level of football is that it is often punctuated by all manner of hilarious cock ups and after that ridiculous challenge to concede a spot kick inside five minutes, the bloopers kept coming, particularly from Victoria’s strikers who didn’t appear as if they’d be able to hit the posterior of a milk bearing animal with a string instrument.

You can imagine the surprise then as after a succession of chances that you suspect a bedridden grandmother would have done better with, Victoria not only equalised through Marcos Rabenhorst but then took the lead through Julian Schmid with only five minutes of the first half remaining. Quite the turn around and a defining moment if Victoria could get to the break with the lead intact. Of course they couldn’t as three minutes later Emre Coskun equalised. “Ich glaube nicht es!!!” cried my new friend.

Excellent use of garden furniture going on in the home dugout

German Meldrew may have been right in his assessment of the standard but he was certainly wide of the mark when it came to the entertainment levels on offer. But surely the second half couldn’t match the breath-taking pace of the first? Condor clearly felt it could as they took the mantra of “anything Victoria can do, we can do better” and subsequently gave away a ludicrous penalty of their own, this one inside three minutes of the restart thanks to the antics of Benjamin Kruk in goal. Marcel Rodrigues converted for the home side.

Not to be outdone with their fine efforts of throwing away a lead within three minutes of taking it in the first half, Victoria went one better this time as they allowed Condor to draw level within 90 seconds as Ibrahim Ozalp netted the sixth and final goal of a ridiculously enjoyable game.

There could and should have been more goals but again both sides finishing let them down but this was a wonderful advert for Oberliga Hamburg and the only way to celebrate and calm the nerves after an end-to-end encounter was by naturally heading back to the sanctuary of the bar.

Post game shot anyone?

The mystical ceramic bull

Here, the party was kicking up a notch with trays of shots going round and a strange green ceramic bull in full Victoria kit sat on the bar which nobody was able to suitably explain the purpose of. Had the option existed, I could have happily stayed at Stadion Hoheluft all evening talking football and taking selfies with the locals but unfortunately at some point the bar had to shut with McCarthy as one of the last people to crawl out of it and into the Hamburg night, significantly lighter in wallet but happy to have donated a large number of euros to such a superb club.

My new Victoria Hamburg friend poses for his first ever selfie

A "you've got a Jogi Loew jumper on" selfie

And where did that Hamburg night take me? Back to the Reeperbahn of course and that is I am afraid to say where the brilliant story of Victoria Hamburg versus Condor Hamburg must come to an end. For legal reasons, I am unable to report on what happened back on the Beatles favourite street.

All I can say about the nights activities is this: Hail Mary. Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary...Hail Mary….

SC Victoria Hambug: Tobias Grubba, Tarek Abdalla, Marcel Rodrigues 1, Vincent Boock, Jan-Ove Edeling (Mats Neumann), Torben Wacker, Matthias Ribeau (Luis Hacker), Len Stromer, Julian Schmid 1 (Kevin Zschimmer), Benik Carolus, Marcus Rabenhorst 1.

Condor Hamburg: Benjamin Kruk, Adam Hamdan, Alexander Krohn 1, Isaak Hoeling, Emre Coskun 1, Kevin Mellmann (Lars Ludemann), Mike Theis, Till Daudert, Max Anders, Ibrahim Ozalp 1, Stefan Klaes (Julian Kunkel).

Attendance: 203

Gent v Vfl Wolfsburg. 17/02/16

"Ghent has the world’s most vegetarian restaurants per head. Thank Christ we'll be too busy drinking to eat anything"

Gent 2-3 Vfl Wolfsburg. Ghelamco Arena.
Wednesday 17/02/16

If your team reaches the Champions League knockout stages for the first time in their history and you know you have very little chance of lifting the trophy come the end of the season, then perceived wisdom suggests you should want to draw one of the big boys and go out with a bang and a trip to one of Europe's Cathedrals of football.

Well sod that. With all due respect to those at Camp Nou, the Bernabeu or Juventus Stadium, the place we wanted Wolfsburg to be sent to was Ghelamco Arena, home of the Belgian champions and another side losing their Champions League last 16 virginity, Gent.

The reason behind shunning the big boys in favour of the tournaments smallest remaining club was very simple. A well respected and experienced traveller had described the city of Ghent to us as "Bruges but on a smaller scale, cheaper and with a lot less tourists". Having experienced Bruges on last years Belgian themed football trip, that basically meant an absolute plethora of pubs to visit all serving beers that would blow your head off - metaphorically speaking of course.

Tongerlo - only 6.5%

Thankfully, the footballing Gods came together to decree that Wolfsburg would visit Gent and so we found ourselves emailing our old mate, Holger Ballwanz. A word on Holger here if I may diverge - and I may, it is my blog after all. Holger played nearly 200 times for Wolfsburg and is now what is effectively a Fan Liason Officer. He looks after the supporters and for reason that very few people would be able to fathom other than a highly paid psychiatrist, we are among those supporters. It is obviously difficult for us to sort out tickets for ourselves living 600 odd miles away but Holger without fail always manages to get them on our behalf. It's like somebody in Germany getting in contact with a retired Ledley King at Spurs and him sorting out tickets for them whenever they can make a game. Can you ever imagine that happening in the profit and corporate driven world of the Premier League? No, and that is why German football is superior.

Knowing full well the damage that Belgian beer has reeked on the broken bodies and minds of greater men on previous visits, the wise decision was taken to embark on just the three beers on the Eurostar over, with one following while we awaited a connection at Brussels. The Eurostar is a glorious way to travel, even more so when you can go onwards to anywhere in Belgium with your ticket and we took full advantage of that to arrive in Ghent at around 3pm.

Saint Nickolas Church

That left the best part of six hours until kick off, plenty of time to "explore". That exploration took us to see Saint Nickolas Church and have a wander around the cobbled streets which confirmed one aspect of the Bruges comparison. But how would Ghent do in the beer stakes against it's northern cousin? Well, the 10 bars we visited over the course of the evening suggests pretty well.

Wolfsburg had arranged for their supporters to meet in Dulle Griet before the game which we duly did for a few "weak" beers of only 8%. That loosened up the tongue for when the inevitable questions came as we began chatting to Die Wolfe's travelling army about why we supported their club with the answer of "Schteve McClaren" resulting in the normal reaction of bemusement and the sort of look you tend to reserve for people who you suspect should be locked up in a secure mental facility.

Wolfsburg fans enjoying the beer in Dulle Griet

"So, why do you support Wolfsburg?"

Mental we may be, but this was our third away game out of four on the Champions League tour with Wolfsburg and we were soon being asked if we were joining the fans on the shuttle bus for the journey to the ground. No was the answer - it would be leaving two hours before kick off and we had to visit plenty more pubs. Purely for research purposes in our quest to compare the city to Bruges, you understand.

And so we left our fellow Wolfsburg fans and headed off on this mission of great importance. It took us to Primus, The Cover, Trefpunt, Gloria and Bar des Amis before the game. Trefpunt and Gloria were the stand out pubs of these, the former for having a man with the greatest waxed moustache I have ever seen in my life and the latter for being an underground bar that appeared to have been hollowed out of a cave and was lit with what seemed to be only candles.

Piers enjoys his beer in a cave

Like a good batsman building his innings, we'd got our eye in with the 8% stuff and by the time we were in the taxi heading to Ghelmaco Arena we'd moved through the gears to hit the 14% beer. This proved to be a dangerous move in terms of bladder control as the stadium was some way out of the city. Ghelmaco Arena was only opened in 2013, which Wikipedia reliably informs me makes it the first new stadium to open in Belgium since 1974.

Ghelamco Arena - or a shopping centre?

From the outside, it looked more like a shopping centre, very square and lit up in the brilliant bright blue colours of Gent - although on this evening, the wonderfully nicknamed Buffalos played in a stunning electric yellow. It's on the small side, holding just 20,000 which means tickets are hard to come by for a lot of games. But that smallness and intimacy leads to an excellent atmosphere which is no doubt helped by the fact that the stands are steep, keeping the noise in and the fans close to the pitch. It also clearly has the corporate fan in mind, with the two stands along the sides of the pitch featuring a whole host of executive box facilities as well as some giant windows that jutted out over the back couple of rows of seats.

Big window

Ghelamco Arena in all her glory

The Wolfsburg support were kept in one corner and had plenty to cheer, thanks partly to the Belgian champions bizarre formation. Now despite being a Sunday League title winning manager, I'm not going to claim to be Gary Neville with an iPad at the best of times, let alone after 10 pints of Belgian beer. But Gent seemed to be in a rather odd 3-1-3-1-2 set up which needless to say was a total disaster for 80 minutes. They were also up against Julian Draxler who was playing like a man possessed. The German international scored one right on the stroke of half time and then added a second ten minutes after the restart. Max Kruse added the third after which Wolfsburg hit the bar. It could have been a massacre but somehow Gent will go to Germany for the second leg still in the tie as the Wolfsburg defenced parted like the proverbial red sea in the last ten minutes to allow Sven Kums and Kalifa Coulibaly to pull two back with the game finishing 3-2.

A very intimiate and impressive stadium

Lady luck was with us again as we exited the Ghelmaco as we managed to jump straight in a taxi along with Rob, another bloke we discovered who travels out from England to support Wolfsburg, with the instruction to the driver of "take us where the nightlife is." The man absolutely delivered on this front, dropping us in a student area packed with bars and we soon found one local chap who was happy to take us on yet another pub crawl to toast the Wolfsburg win which saw us add Rock Circus, Salamander and Delirium to the pubs list.

Ghent has the most vegetarian restaurants per head of any city in the world which meant we’d avoided eating all day and so you can only imagine the relief when the bar lady in Salamader took pity on our food plight and presented us with a complimentary sausage. This is not a euphemism, but one genuine meat sausage on a plate. "Don't have too much mustard, it is very hot," was the friendly warning which was needless to say ignored - the result being that the mustard was nearly so hot as to make me sick. Still, having the roof of your mouth burnt off is better than eating something veggie.

More beer please captain

We eventually stumbled back to the hotel at 3am, waking up the next morning in a world of too-much-strong-Belgian-beer related trouble as confidently predicted some 12 hours previously. But the ultimate conclusion was that our learned friend had actually got it wrong in his description of Ghent. 

Ghent was like Bruges, but on a smaller scale, cheaper and with less tourists - and slightly better. High praise indeed.

Gent: Matz Sels, Lasse Neilsen, Stefan Mitrovic, Nana Asare, Thomas Foket, Renato Neto, Sven Kums 1, Brecht Dejaegere, Danijel Milicevic (Kenny Saief), Laurent Depoirte (Kalifa Coulibaly 1), Moses Daddy Simon (Thomas Matton).

Vfl Wolfsburg: Koen Casteels, Sebastian Jung (Andre Schurrle), Robin Knoche, Dante, Ricardo Rodriguez, Luzi Gustavo, Maxi Arnold, Vieirinha (Marcel Shafer), Christian Trasch, Julian Draxler 2, Max Kruse 1 (Leandro Putaro).

Attendance: 19,978

PSV Eindhoven v Vfl Wolfsburg. 03/11/15

"If Wolfsburg are going to lose this game then I hope it is 9-0 so we get to hear Zombie Nation eight more times."

PSV Eindhoven 2-0 Vfl Wolfsburg. Philips Stadion.
Tuesday 03/11/15

It sounds like a dream inspired by a combination of the strongest gouda and edam imaginable - a street that features 50 different bars with names such as Sgt Peppers and the Tipsy Duck. But this is no dream, no figment of the imagination like Diagon Alley (sorry kids, Harry Potter isn't real). It exists and is alive and well in Eindhoven, the latest destination in the Vfl Wolfsburg 2015-16 Champions League tour.

Interesting light effects around the cathedral

It's name is Stratumseind and it isn't particularly long. It stretches just the 200 odd metres from the imposing figure of St Catherine's Cathedral down to the River Dommel but in that space it has packed in a plethora of licensed venues varying from nice cafes to traditional English pubs to smokey venues that pump out European dance music into the early hours. Yes, we're talking 2 Unlimited.

Train beers from Amsterdam to wonderful Eindhoven

Two away games into Wolfsburg's first Champions League campaign since 2009 and only the second ever in the cubs history, finding gems like Stratumseind has represented one of the few highlights of going away with Die Wolfe so far. The home form for Dieter Hecking's men has been good - two games, two victories over both their opponents here PSV Eindhoven and CSKA Moscow. Away from home, not so good as they arrived in the Netherlands having lost their only game on the road against Manchester United at the end of September.

That hadn't stopped several hundred Wolfsburg fans making the four hour trip via coach and train while we'd headed there by flying into Amsterdam and then catching a 90 minute train. Complete with train beers, of course.

Hertog Jan - fantastic Dutch beer

It wasn't just Strastumseind that highlighted the best of Eindhoven's drinking holes. Eindhoven is after all a big university city with plenty of places for students to go and that meant we got through our fair share of beer - into the double figures of pints, gulp - before kick off at the Philips Stadion.

And the Philips earned Eindhoven another tick in the box, being one of those all too rare a breed of grounds that is bang in the city centre. Being little more than a ten minute walk from Stratumseind we joined a friendly PSV fan who not only showed us the way but then bought us a beer from the stands that had been handily set up around the stadium. "F**k UEFA, if they don't let us drink in there we drink out here". Couldn't agree more, mate.

Rumble, Rboert, our new PSV friend and McCarthy "f**king Uefa"
with some beer outside the Stadion

The Wolfsburg support was kept high in one corner of the stadium with a pretty poor view of the action. The ground itself appeared excellent from up in the Gods with the steep stands packed with beered up PSV fans and a rocking atmosphere that was no doubt helped by the home sides dominance of the game which they went onto win 2-0.

Philips Stadion - cracking view from the away end

Philips Stadion toilets - or were they showers?

Jurgen Locadia and Luuk De Jong were the goalscorers as PSV kept this wide open group even more wide open than it was before kick off. The 1990s dance music wasn't restricted to the pre and post game partying either, both PSV goals and the traditional end of game lap of honour being carried out to the brilliant tones of Zombie Nation and Kenkraft 400 which was incidentally one of Rumble's top remixes back in his days of being a London DJ. Could this place get any better?

An alternative view - should have started the game there

Well, yes it could. All those Wolfsburg fans not traveling back on the coach that evening - and there were quite a few madmen planning on staying up all night to catch the 6am train home - were ushered back into the ground and walked around the perimeter track to get out. Which gave a much better perspective of what a fantastic ground the Philips Stadion was if you weren't penned into a corner up in the clouds.

Exiting the ground via the pitch was a new one...

The imposing stands of the Philips Stadion

Pubs giving out free emergency services
helmets - tick

Post-game entertainment? Well that was pubs giving out free firemen and police helmets and fireworks and flares galore going off. Rumble kept up his fine record of falling asleep in foreign night clubs. And I woke up the next morning in the hotel covered in stolen butter. All on Stratumseind of course, the greatest street in the world. Unofficially.

PSV Eindhoven: Jeroen Zot, Joshua Brenet, Santiago Arias, Jeffrey Bruma, Hector Moreno, Jose Andres Guardado, Davy Propper, Adam Maher (Jorrit Hendrix), Luciano Narsingh (Gaston Pereiro), Luuk De Jong 1, Jurgen Locadia 1 (Nicolas Isimat-Mirin).

Vfl Wolfsburg: Diego Benaglio, Sebastian Jung, Ricardo Rodriguez, Timm Klose, Naldo, Luiz Gustavo, Daniel Caligiuri, Joshua Guilavogui (Julian Draxler), Andre Schurrle (Vieirinha), Max Arnold, Bas Dost (Nicklas Bendtner).

Attendance: 35,000