FC Ingolstadt v Darmstadt 98. 09/04/17

"You know Nigel Farage, the Brexit bloke? Yeah, you look like him"

FC Ingolstadt 3-2 Darmstadt 98. Audi Sportpark.
Sunday 09/04/17

The Bundesliga has been in fashion among English football supporters for over half a decade now. Cheap prices, terraces, great atmospheres and beer while watching a game have made Germany the number one destination for football tourists.

That popularity has apparently failed to reached Ingolstadt however. There was an incredibly bemused reaction to the appearance of eight English blokes on the south terrace for Die Schanzer's huge relegation clash with Darmstadt. This was perhaps best summed up by one blokes question of "Why the **** have you come to watch Ingolstadt? We never get English people here."

Audi Sportpark. Creatively named after the local motor company

It turned out that this bloke, as well as sharing an uncanny resemblance to Nigel Farage, was actually an Ingolstadt director. As far as opening remarks in a conversation with a board member of a football club you are visiting go, "You know Nigel Farage, the Brexit bloke? Yeah, you look like him" is perhaps not the best greeting you can make. Still, the Ingolstadt fans took it all in their stride. For them at least, Brexit doesn't seem to mean Brexit. Unlucky Theresa.

But back to the main question here: Why the **** had we gone to watch Ingolstadt? We were actually on a stag do in Munich but rather than do a normal stag do activity like paintballing, go karting or something that involves exercise and grossly unhealthy stuff like that, we decided to take in a football game. A wise choice, I'm sure you will agree. 

Drinking in Munich's Englischer Garten with Dortmund and
Bayern fans on the Saturday, including Busche. We all love a bit
of busche.

Englischer Garten fun and games

Watching either 1860 or Bayern Munich play would've been the sensible choice. But 1860 were away and Bayern were hosting Borussia Dortmund so tickets were scarcer than a vegetarian Bavarian. This was great news for me, having been to the Allianz twice already to see both Munich teams, as it meant the new ground klaxon could sound. 

And that new ground ended up being Audi Sportpark. Ingolstadt is about 45 minutes north of Munich by train and so with the obligatory train beers purchased - not that they were really needed after two solid days of drinking in Munich beforehand, which included a fantastic session in the Englischer Garten with Bayern and Dortmund fans the previous afternoon - we were on our way. 

Big fine coming the way of whoever
was in Munich and yet opted to buy a pack
of Heineken for the train...

Given the lure of Munich's beer and a fantastic train timetable cock up, we only arrived in Ingolstadt 30 minutes before kick off. Thankfully, the club seemingly had the foresight to employ Sebastian Vettell as one of their shuttle bus drivers and against all the odds we made it to the out of town stadium just in time for kick off.

Audi Sportpark was built in 2010 and is your standard new German stadium; single tiered in a rectangular shape, compact and with a great atmosphere. The current version of Ingolstadt were only formed in 2004 - since then they've been on a meteoric rise through the divisions which culminated with promotion to the top flight for the first time in 2015. Seeing that when the ground opened in 2010 when they were still in the third tier, it's on the smaller side for a Bundesliga ground holding just over 15,000. Being miles out of town, there is little around but the club are clearly trying to improve that with a traditional Bavarian wooden shed having been erected outside as a pub. 

The South Terrace

On the terrace in what turned out to be blistering heat

Inside and we were with the hardcore support on the terrace. It was an interesting mixture of people and not solely the flag waving ultras you tend to find dominating that sort of section of the ground at other German clubs. In amongst those types were kids scaling the fences at the front, old blokes puffing on cigars and yes, members of the board who look like Mr Farrage. No need to worry about the trouble that can come from taking photos or being football tourists as has become the case at some venues across Germany in recent times, everyone was welcome at Ingolstadt. 

Child scales fence, not put off by giant speaker next to him

There were other elements missing that you usually associate with German football. No man with a 1980's building site bullhorn stood at the front leading the singing for example. No, Ingolstadt lead the way in the use of modern technology, giving their top boy a microphone and a set of speakers strung along the front of the terrace. Welcome to the 21st century.

Some might expect this eclectic take on fan culture to dilute the atmosphere but Audi Sportspark was rocking despite the emoty soaces. This was probably helped by the importance of the game, with both sides in very real danger of relegation to Bundesliga 2 next season. The proverbial six pointer as the season draws to a close this most definitely was.

In with the Ingolstadt massive

Wild celebrations all round as Ingolstadt pick up the win

If we were watching a side that, come the end of the season deserves to get relegated then the same should definitely be said of the referee, a Herr Manuel Grafe. He would've been better of being named Manuel Gaff given the number of mistakes that happened over the 90 minutes. Had this been in England, the famous chant about the man in black being a word that rhymes with banker would've been ringing out from all four corners of the stadium given how attrocious he was for both sides. 

Thankfully, Herr Gaffe didn't affect the quality of entertainment factor of the game which ranks as arguably the best I've seen in Germany since my last match involving Darmstadt. On that day four and a bit years ago they drew 1-1 with Alemannia Aachen in the Bundesliga 3. On this day, they were on the wrong end of a 3-2 defeat that pushes them closer to the trap door back to whence they came. Make no mistake however, it has been quite the fairytale rise for both these clubs to the top flight of German football.

As you can see, I managed to take a lot of varied photos

The game went off at breakneck speed, Ingolstadt going 1-0 up through Pascal Gross. That didn't last very long and soon it was 1-1, Darmstadt equalising via Mario Vrancic. Herr Gaffe then decided he wanted to become centre stage, awarding Darmstadt one of the worst penalty decisions I've ever seen which Vrancic converted for 2-1. Almog Cohen made it 2-2 just past the hour mark and then Markus Suttner netted what turned out to be the winner with a quite beautiful free kick. Not content with that penalty decision, Herr Gaffe decided to flash two red cards with a matter of minutes remaninging to Darmstadt's Antonio Colak and the hosts Romain Bregerie. Blimey. That made it three wins in a row for Ingolstadt for the first ever time in the Bundesliga and took them to within a point of safety. For Darmstadt and their manager Torsten Frings - the former German international of fantastic mullet fame - it looks as though Bundesliga 2 beckons for next season.

What with this being a Sunday, we were on a tight schedule to get back to Munich afterwards and so had to foresake any sort of exploration of Ingolstadt itself. This was a shame as not only does the Danube pass through it, but according to Wikipedia it is the place where Victor Frankenstein creates his monster. Rather less excitingly, it is also home to Audi which explains the sponsorship deal behind the stadium. There was just time for a look around the club shop - given the apparent lack of foreign visitors, were we the first ever English supporters to buy Ingolstadt scarves - and to grab a selfie with the mascot Shanzi. We had no idea what Shanzi was meant to be so any answers on a postcard please.

Any ideas what this thing is meant to be?

Once back in Munich, we toasted our new found friends at Ingolstadt's hopeful escape from relegation by turning a Chinese restaurant into a karaoke bar until 3am. If English supporters rocking up at Audi Sportpark seemed bizarre to Mr Farage, Lord knows what he'd have made of them then singing Taylor Swift songs in-between plates of lemon duck. `

FC Ingolstadt: Martin Hansen, Romain Bregerie, Markus Suttner 1, Marcel Tisserand, Marvin Matip, Roger (Alfredo Morales), Pascal Gross 1, Sonny Kittel (Lukas Hinterseer), Almog Cohen 1, Matthew Leckie, Dario Lezcano (Anthony Jung).

Darmstadt 98: Michael Esser, Aytac Sulu, Sandro Sirigu, Immanuel Hohn, Fabian Holland, Mario Vrancic 2 (Leon Guwara), Markus Steinhofer, Hamit Altintop, Wilson Kamavuaka (Sven Shipplock), Antonio Colak, Felix Platte (Jan Rosenthal).

Attendance: 14,081

SC Freiburg v Hertha Berlin. 19/09/14

"Have I seen this man? Yes. It is Jogi Loew. He was enjoying himself in a pub three streets away last week."

SC Freiburg 2-2 Hertha Berlin. Mage Solar Stadion.
Friday 19/09/14.

Whoever decided to construct Dreisamstadion, the home of SC Freiburg, on the edge of the Black Forest deserves a medal. In fact, whoever decided to build the city of Freiburg itself is worthy of the highest honours that mankind can throw at them.

Gothic cathedral? Check. Warmest city in Germany? Check. City walls? Check. Little open air gutters called Bachle that run water through the pedestrianised streets and which cool the air? Check. Urban legend that if you unintentionally step in a Bachle, you are destined to marry a Freiburger? Check. City that gave Jogi Loew his break in football? Big check.

City Gates/Home of Rapunzel

This was just a one night stay but with hindsight it should have been longer. The little corner of south west Germany that Freiburg occupies is a stunning place full of forests, mountains, friendly people and most importantly of all of course, good beer.

A Freiburg street, complete with bachle on the right

We arrived at Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport on Friday morning, totally bamboozled by separate exits from the arrivals lounge into France and Switzerland. Where did those of us wanting to go to Germany go? This sort of puzzlement wouldn't have happened in the early 1940s. We picked Switzerland but needless to say that was wrong and so we had the torturous task of crossing the border into France (a set of double doors in the airport) to begin the hour long bus journey to Freiburg.

Once there, we unfortunately avoided any Bachle's and stumbled across a delightful pub called Schlappen. Three pints later and we lured in a typically fit barmaid to bombard with questions. One of these included the whereabouts of Herr Loew, who we were reliably informed by our contact at SC Freiburg was a regular in the city. Just in case anybody in Germany didn't know who the coach that led them to the World Cup two months ago was, Andy had decided to print out a photo to show them. So had she seen him? Loew and behold (I've waited ages to use that), she bloody well had! Last week, he was in a pub three streets away.

Haben sie diesen Mann gesehen?

Now I don't care how fit a girl is - and this one was very - if Jogi Loew is the vicinity, you go and find Jogi Loew. The only thing for it was to visit every pub in the next three streets. Fortunately, we didn't know in which direction she meant either so that would mean every pub in the next three streets in every direction. The best of which was Martins, brewing its own stuff on the premises.

Several pints later and we had neither found Jogi or were in possession of the photo, it having been drunkenly lost. We had however tried some of the local speciality beer, a cloudy offering that tasted distinctively of lemons. Horrible at first, it seemed to grow on you after a few pints although that could of course have been due to a numbing of the tastebuds.

Who goes to Freiburg to buy a Millllllllllllllll scarf?

And so onto Dresiamstadion, or Mage Solar Stadion as it is known for sponsorship purposes. A quick tram ride took us to the foot of the Black Forest and we wandered down residential streets set up with your normal beer stands and scarf stalls - including one selling some of the greats of the English game along with Millwall. Are Millllllllllllll popular in this part of Germany? Answers on a postcode.

Being members of the fourth estate once again for this massive visit of Hertha Berlin meant we had press passes waiting for us courtesy of the excellent Andrew at SC. That of course meant we had enough time for more pre-match beer, this time in a tented area just outside the ground where we enjoyed pints and schnapps with Hertha and Freiburg fans and some traditional Swiss snuff with a group of Swiss chaps who make the journey to home games at Dresiam due to Swiss football being "shit". Well, if you can't even beat England at home guys...

Schnapps with the traveling Hertha army

The stadium itself looked exactly like a football ground in Lord of the Rings would if the Fellowship had have taken on the armies of Mordor in a kick about rather than a war for Middle Earth. With towering hills and trees aplenty in the background, it was the epitome of an old style English ground. Tall floodlight pylons, big one tiered stands littered with poles holding up the roof. Fans loitered around outside the stands before the game, enjoying a beer and the view into the Black Forest in the distance and once inside the atmosphere was electric.

A football ground at the foot of the Black Forest? We like

Given the distance to come on a Friday, Hertha had traveled in numbers and they weren't to be disappointed. Neither were we, our press box seats being next to the official Tweeters of the visiting club. In an all too familiar set of circumstances, we were the only people in the press box munching on sausage and drinking beer but the more professionals around us were too engrossed in the spectacle unfurling on the pitch to notice the growing inebriated state of two of their fellow journalists.

Dreisamstadion

It looks and feels VERY English

The locals go wild as Marc Oliver-Kempf  makes it 1-0

The homesters went 1-0 ahead in the first half through a Marc Oliver-Kempf header, the wonderfully named Ronny - not O'Sullivan, or Biggs, or Rocket, just Ronny - equalised with a free kick before the break and Felix Kraus made it 2-1 Freiburg with 79 minutes to go. And then, with 93 on the club Hertha's Nico Schulz was shown red for a beautifully rash and unnecessary tackle.

Game over? Well no. Ronny had other ideas and in the 96th minute Hertha got a free kick on the edge of the box. Quite incredibly, their goalkeeper Thomas Kraft came rampaging forward, got involved in a bit of pushing and shoving with some defenders and then started getting involved in the Freiburg wall. Told in no uncertain terms by the referee to get back in his goal and stop clowning around, he duly did so but before he could make it all the way back to the other end Ronny had bent the set piece into the top corner to cue mental celebrations from the away fans.

Hertha goalkeeper Thomas Kraft starts organising Freiburg's
defensive wall in surreal scenes

And the confusion caused allows Ronny to net a 96th minute
leveller from the free kick. Boom.

And how do you top that for a game of football? Why, by going to a closed shopping centre that is now selling beer and is packed to the rafters for a live bands performance. And then back to Schlappen for more lemon beer. And then to a discotheque that is actually called Discothek where Andy promptly fell asleep ten minutes after we entered and spent the night totally unaware that groups of German girls were posing for photos with this strange Englishman asleep in the corner of their nightclub. He will no doubt be in hundreds of German's Facebook photo albums and we'll never even know about it.

Partying in a shopping centre

Andy becomes immortalised in a hundered Freiburger's Facebook
albums as the queue up to have a photo with drunk Englishman
asleep in corner of night club

And did any of those girls end up marrying yours truly? No. Next time we go back to Freiburg I'll have to try harder to fall into a Bachle.

Proper floodlights

Freiburg and Hertha line up for this big clash

An impressive show of support from the traveling Hertha army

"Cheers for coming guys - sorry about the 96th minute equaliser"

SC Freiburg: Roman Burki, Oliver Sorg (Mensur Mujdza), Pavel Krmas, Marc Oliver-Kempf 1, Christian Gunter, Jonathan Schmid, Vladimir Darida (Nicolas Hoffler), Julian Schuster, Felix Klaus 1, Karim Guede, Max Phillipp (Mike Frantz.

Hertha Berlin: Thomas Kraft, Peter Pekarik, Fabian Lustenberger (John Heitinga), John Anthony Brooks, Nico Schulz, Roy Beerens, Ronny 2, Hajime Hosogai, Jens Hegeler, Genki Haraguchi (Valentin Stocker), Julian Schieber (Salomon Kalou).

Attendance: 23,600

Borussia Dortmund v VfL Wolfsburg. 05/04/14

"Ich leibe Phil Collins, Easy Lover ja ja ja"

Borussia Dortmund 2-1 VfL Wolfsburg. Signal Iduna Park.
Saturday 05/04/14

Having spent the previous evening sleeping in a doorway after losing a hotel key, it takes something special to convince you to do anything but lie in bed for the entire day. And it has to be something really special to convince you to drag yourself onto public transport, be sick on a tram full of people (Andy) and make an hour journey across Germany while attempting to get back in the beer game. That something really special? Westfalenstadion, Dortmund.

The first rule of three day football trips is don't go all out on the first night. Something that was hopelessly ignored at Rot-Weiss Essen v SC Verl and the resulting night of partying with the Essen support. It left two slightly (or in Andy's case, very) broken Englishmen to head to Dortmund to see Borussia take on VfL Wolfsburg.

One man's recovery is sleeping on the floor of a train...

And the others is a can of Veltins

On another day, to another ground, for two other teams we might have considered sacking this off. But Signal Iduna Park to give it it's official title is like very few others in Europe and this was our team, Wolfsburg, taking on one of the biggest in Germany.

The best way to battle through feelings of suicide brought about by consuming far too much beer is the simple hair of the dog technique. That meant consuming a can as soon as was humanly possible, in this case at 11am on the train from Essen to Dortmund. For Andy, this took slightly longer until we found a bar called Pfefferkorn with him deciding to use the train journey to take a little nap in the middle of the floor.

Bergmann Bier kiosk

Zwei Bergmann bitte

It was far too hot in Pfefferkorn for two hungover men despite the fact they were serving the excellent Brinkhoffs so we did what all good Dortmunder's do and began outside street drinking thanks to a little kiosk selling home brewed bottles of Bergmann Bier at an absolute steal of 2. This represented the only place in the city you can buy that particular beer and as such proved very popular with the locals.

Of course, this also meant explaining the story about how two Englishmen have ended up becoming VfL Wolfsburg supporters, a very long and sad tale involving the words "Steve", "McClaren", "FC Twente", "Wolfsburg", "umbrella" and of course "I short of knew" said in a ridiculous Dutch accent.

A Bratwurst induced mustard
disaster

Signal Iduna Park is well served by public transport and it was a quick train hop to the stadium where tickets were collected and beers and sausage from the many street vendors around the ground were bought and consumed outside of the stadium while mingling with others heading to the game. And what a big game it was, with Wolfsburg chasing a Champions League spot and Dortmund trying to cling onto second with the title already heading to the Allianz.

Fit women who like Marco Reus? Perfect wife material.

The stadium itself is fantastic. You get some grounds which you enter for the first time and they take your breath away. It's unusual to find anywhere that does it for a second time, the novelty normally having worn off but Signal Iduna Park managed it. We were in the complete opposition corner from our last visit, this time tucked high away opposite the Yellow Wall up with the Gods looking down at this tiny patch of green surrounded by towering blocks of yellow, black and noise. 

You'll Never Walk Alone

The famous Yellow Wall celebrates the stadiums 40th birthday

The scale of the place is massive and what makes it appear even bigger is that every stand is different, meaning none of it appears as though it is meant to fit together. The steepness and vastness just adds to the atmosphere and when You'll Never Walk Alone gets going before kick off it is a spine tingling moment as scarves, flags and banners are hoisted into the air before the teams enter the arena.

To our surprise, there were Wolfsburg fans everywhere none of whom were being very subtle about their allegiances. I had had the good grace to hide my green scarf and that lasted until 34 minutes when a combination of beer and Ivica Olic giving the visitors the lead brought it into play, swiftly followed by a high five from the chap next to me who also turned out to be a Die Wolfe fan.

Dortmund v Wolfsburg

Dortmund aren't one of the finest teams in Europe for no reason though and two second half goals from Robert Lewadowski and Marco Reus ensured it was they who took the three points. We watched the stadium empty afterwards, eventually being the last two in the top tier which led to arguably one of the best games of hide and seek you are ever likely to encounter with my good self hiding high at the top of the stand, only to be caught by one alert female steward, quashing any hopes of managing to remain unfound until the midweek Champions League semi final with Real Madrid. 

Playing hide and seek with the
stewards  inside Signal Iduna Park

Steward wins and get's a Hassocks Fatboys
FC pennant for her victory

After the traditional post game dicking around inside the stadium that seems to take place every time we visit Dortmund, it was time to catch the train and head straight back to Essen. This was sensible given the early start to head to Holland the following day, or at least it would have been had we not been lured into a bar outside the hotel on our return.

This bar wench was happy with out custom until Easy Lover
was played for the 12th time

What made two strong minded individuals deviate from their planned course of a relatively early night? Beer and Jagermesiter obviously, but also the prospect of the self-DJing venue whereby patrons were allowed to pick their own music from the laptop.

It was only when we were asked to leave that we realised that German's perhaps don't share our love of Phil Collins and Easy Lover. Certainly not enough to hear it a dozen times, anyway.

Borussia Dortmund: Mitchell Langerak, Mats Hummels, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Lukasz Piszczek, Sebastian Kehl, Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Oliver Kirch), Marco Reus 1, Nuri Sahin (Erik Durm), Kevin Grosskreutz, Robert Lewandowski 1, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Milos Jojic).

VfL Wolfsburg: Max Grun, Naldo, Robin Knoche, Ricardo Rodriguez, Ivan Perisic, Kevin De Bruyne, Christian Trasch (Patrick Ochs), Bernard Malanda Adje (Daniel Caligiuri), Luiz Gustavo, Maximilian Arnold, Ivica Olic 1.

Attendance: 80,000.