u/QuestionableExclusiv

Marco Friedl ist schnell abgefrühstückt:

23 Minuten gegen Argentinien, war am zweiten Gegentor direkt beteiligt.

Romano Schmid kommt etwas besser weg:

Nach einem starken Eröffnungsspiel gegen Jordanien, wo er das erste WM Tor von Österreich seit 1998 schoss, tauchte er merklich ab. Die rechte Seite war eine merkliche Schwachstelle fürs Österreich, Sabitzer auf Links trat deutlich häufiger in Erscheinung. Im 3:3 gegen Algerien wurde er sogar zur Halbzeit ausgewechselt. Trotzdem stand er jedes Spiel in der Startelf und absolvierte 265 Minuten.

Insgesamt haben beide nicht viel Eigenwerbung betrieben, wobei das komplette Österreich Team recht enttäuschend aufgetreten ist. Ich glaube nicht, dass wir durch die WM mehr potentielle Abnehmer für Romano oder Marco Friedl sehen werden.

Wer in der Deutschen Fußball Social Media Bubble hat denn die Probleme, die Deutschland bei der WM hatte, nicht schon Wochen im Voraus gesehen? So gut wie alle, denen ich folge.

Manu Thiele, Calcio Berlin, Conan Furlong, DimiAnubis, nur um ein paar zu nennen, sie können sich jetzt allesamt hinstellen und sagen "Haben wir es nicht gesagt?".

Wie können die Misstände im Deutschen Nationalteam so offensichtlich sein, dass jeder beliebige Content Creator dazu Stellung beziehen kann, ohne am Ende wirklich falsch zu liegen? Das sind alles keine Ex-Spieler oder Trainer oder irgendwer, sondern nur selbsternannte "Experten", ein Völkchen, worüber man sich normalerweise gerne lustig macht.

Und warum sieht der DFB es dann nicht?

Die allermeisten haben gesagt, die Neuer Nominierung macht ein unnötiges Fass auf, Baumann wird in 90% der Fälle reichen. -> Traf zu

Die allermeisten haben gesagt, die Scheiße mit Kimmich auf RV muss aufhören. -> Kimmich war auf RV mal wieder lost

Die allermeisten haben die Sane Nominierung kritisiert. -> Sane war stehts bemüht, also Arbeitszeugnis 4.

Der einzige Punkt, an den ich mich erinnern kann, wo ein Experte einen Take hatte, bei denen viele kritisch waren, der sich aber am Ende als vermutlich richtig herausgestellt hat, war der Olli Kahn Take über Musiala (Sollte zuhause bleiben).

Ich finde, Manu Thiele hat es in seinem Video nach der Kadernominierung auf den Punkt gebracht:

(Paraphrasiert) "Das ist mir zu viel weiter so, mit Spielern die schon gescheitert sind. Warum nicht den jungen Wilden eine Chance geben, die kommen vielleicht auch nicht viel weiter, aber haben vielleicht wenigstens die Chance ein bisschen zu zeigen, was in Zukunft gehen könnte, ala 2006."

Was bedeutet das nun für seine potentielle Weiterbeschäftigung bei Werder?

Wirklich Werbung hat er für sich nicht gemacht. Grad beim 2:1 gegen Brasilien am Ende sah er nicht gut aus, hat total gepennt und stand zu hoch.

Drückt das seinen Preis? Will man ihn überhaupt weiter beschäftigen?

Es vergeht kein Tag ohne irgendwelche geilen Underdog-Stories oder andere Highlights, die vermutlich in einem Jahr noch Teil der Meme Kultur rund um den Fußball sein werden.

Von "Amateur"torhütern, die auf der großen Bühne zu Weltstars werden, zu Schiri-Ansagen, die so gut sind, dass sie zu KI-Songs umgedichtet werden bis zu den kleinen Nationen, die jedem den Kicktipp versauen. Und Deutschland hat mal wieder Hoffnung.

Spieltag Zwei der Gruppenphase ist grad mal halb rum und ich kann leider nicht mehr wegschauen.

EDIT: Da es einige hier falsch verstehen, sportlich =/= spielerisch. Spielerisch ist das oft nicht geil, aber ich habe extra "sportlich" erwähnt, um es vom politischen Umfeld des Turniers abzugrenzen. Ich habe vor dem Turnier deutlich mehr politische Unruhen erwartet, die sich auf die sportliche Qualität des Turniers auswirken.

Ja ich weiß, 80 Millionen Bundestrainer und so.

Aber es ist schon auffällig, wie viel besser wir nach den Einwechslungen spielen.

Das kreative Kurzpassspiel primär über Wirtz, Musiala und Havertz fruchtet einfach nicht wirklich, weil Wirtz und Musiala außer Form sind und physisch stärkere Gegner dem ganzen leicht einen Strich durch die Rechnung machen können.

Sobald wir wechseln, spielen wir deutlich direkter und vertikaler. Beide Tore von Undav kamen nach Spielverlagerung auf die außen -> Pass in die Mitte -> Pass in die Tiefe in sich öffnende Räume.

Warum nicht gleich so? Es wirkt deutlich spritziger und besser auf die derzeitigen Gegebenheiten in der Mannschaft angepasst.

Ich hoffe, dass wir am Ende nicht an Nagelsmanns Starrsinnigkeit scheitern

Beide hatten sportliche Höhenflüge, Uerdingen in den 80ern unter Bayer, 1860 in den 90ern unter Wildmoser/Lorant bzw. in den 60ern mit der Meisterschaft etc., und beide sind mehr oder weniger in die sportliche Bedeutungslosigkeit abgestürzt.

Beide haben es sich mit Investoren verscherzt/versaut. Beide sind chronisch pleite.

Beide hängen an alten, baufälligen Stadien, der Grotenburg in Krefeld und dem Grünwalder in Giesing.

Ich würd sagen, 1860 ist insgesamt deutlich bekannter und hatten auch einen (kurzen) höheren Peak, aber Uerdingen ist dafür teilweise einfach noch tiefer gefallen, spielen ja zurzeit in der Oberliga Niederrhein.

Every day across social media, I see plenty of superficial talk about how great german football culture is. You often see words like the infamous "50+1" and "fan-owned" thrown around, especially when discussing differences between other European top flights and germany.

But they never dive deep enough. So here I am attempting to give some bigger insight into why Germany might just be the most "complete" footballing nation in the world.

1. Club culture

In order to understand german football culture, you first have to understand german club culture. This is separate from football, since in germany, anyone can register a club for any activity. There are chess clubs, fishing clubs, tennis clubs, pretty much any activity you can think of, there can be a club for it. All you have to do is register it at a local municipality, have a name, and voila, you have a club, or a "e.V" (eingetragener Verein/registered club). This in itself is not unique to germany of course.

Joining a club usually costs a fee per year, but as a member you have certain rights, such as using the club grounds and of course, voting rights during a "Mitgliederversammlung" (membership assembly). The assembly usually happens once a year for most clubs and will discuss anything from financial numbers, to club successes/failures and plans for the future. Most clubs have a board of some kind, which you can vote on once an election comes up.

EDIT: This is historically important. Clubs as a concept have existed in germany for a over a 100 years. Their existence predates modern political structures and democracy. For many germans, being able to vote as a member of a club were their first experience with the concept of democracy. As such, even today, clubs stand as a monument to democracy and power of the people.

This is where the infamous "50+1" rule comes in, which states that any club is never supposed to be in the hand of any single entity, club members will always have 50% of the vote, plus one. This means no single entity can solely decide the future of the club. This is a difference from "fan-owned". Not every fan is a member of a club.

Most clubs are "Breitensportclubs", meaning they cover more than a single activity. Even smaller village clubs have multiple divisions, from football to handball, volleyball, hockey, you name it. Usually if you join the club you pick a division to join, but nothing stops you from participating in multiple divisions. This broadens the social structure of a club considerably.

"Ehrenamtliche Arbeit" or "voluntary work". Its the heart and soul of club culture. Obviously a small village club wont be able to pay salaries to greenkeepers, coaches, medical staff etc, so its all done as voluntary work. The plumber who works his ass off fixing pipes all week? He will still go the grounds after work to coach the youth team, for free, because he loves the club. The mechanic who spends his day fixing cars? He will be there at 9 AM on Sunday chalking up the pitch for the village derby in 3 hours.

Clubs are a social equalizer. All walks of life come together here, from the kid on social security payments to the rich parents only child. And both are cheering for the same team, both are thrown into the mud when on the pitch.

Because of all this, clubs are often sociopolitical entities first and sport clubs second. Local rivalries are not always born from sporting success/failures, but from historic differences between towns which are then represented by their biggest clubs.

For example, SV Werder Bremen and Hamburger SV have a historic rivalry which dates back hundreds of years before clubs or football even existed, since back in the day they were two of the most important trade centers of germany and competed for economic dominance. This rivalry only then turned to a sports rivalry later and to this day its both about the cities as well as the clubs.

2. Football culture

Football is obviously huge in germany. By far and away the most popular sport. Over 8 Million Germans are registered in some kind of club or a clubs football division, thats roughly 10% of the population. And that does not count people doing it in their free time or fans that are not registered to any club. Real numbers are thus much much higher. Ask anyone on the street and there is a 1/3 chance that they might have played and/or watched football at some point in their lives.

What perhaps makes german football culture most unique and different from, lets say, England and the Premier League, is that it carries the aforementioned club culture all the way to the top flight, which then materializes in the fan culture that you see in Bundesliga today.

People arent simply spectators to a sporting event. They ARE the club. They see themselves as intrinsically linked to the success and failure of the club. For the so called "Aktive Fanszene" (active fanbase), the actual sporting success of the club is secondary to its socio-political place in the german football world. Winning a derby is more important than winning a title. Representing the clubs values and colors is of utmost importance. We call it "active" fanbase, because they plan and execute "active" support as opposed to passive (just watching the game).

They are usually located in the "Kurve", the part of a stadium which usually houses no seats, instead everyone is standing. Here, they wave huge flags, drum a beat to chant to and, of course, often show tifos and pyrotechnics. If you get tickets to the "Kurve", you have to be prepared to not be able to watch the game. People will expect you to join in on "active support".

Each ultra group has their own songs which they chant. In England, you often hear chants targeting the opposing club. In germany, there is usually only chants supporting your own club, unless you are playing in a derby, then insulting the other club is fair game. Its all about representing your club to the outside world. Lyrics of those chants often reference how you cant live without your club, how you will support them until the day you die, etc. Its quite serious.

While hool culture has been largely eliminated for decades, you still have plenty of instances of violence between hostile fan groups. Sometimes representatives from both "Fanszenen" of two clubs actually contact each other and set up meeting points just for both groups to beat each other up.

3. Association structure and league pyramid

It should come as no surprise, with football being so big in germany, that the german football association DFB (Deutscher Fußball Bund) is the largest in the world. It currently houses 23.868 clubs across all of germany, with over 140.000 individual teams registered, split across 21 Regional Associations. The smallest regional association, the "Bremer Fußball Verband" (Bremen being a city state with roughly 700.000 inhabitants across the cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven) still hosts 88 Clubs with nearly 7000 teams, just to put it into perspective. A regional association can have slightly different rules and regulations and all of them host their own Cups. More on that later.

Each club can host a multitude of senior and junior teams across the entire footballing pyramid, which goes as deep as the 13th Tier in some regional associations. Again, taking SV Werder Bremen as an example, its mens football division has 5 senior teams, with the top senior team obviously competing in the Bundesliga, its B Team competing in the 4th Tier, its C team in the 5th, its D Team in the 7th and its E Team all the way down in 8th Tier. But still, this means if you are a member of Werder Bremen, you can technically wear their kit and play for them all the way down in grassroots football.

The tiers are as follows:

1. Bundesliga - You all know this one, the top flight. Average attendance: 40.000
2. 2. Bundesliga - The second tier of professional german football, still well known. Average attendance: 30.000
3. 3. Liga - The last "professional" tier of german football and also the last that covers the entire country. Average attendance: Around 12.000.
4. Regionalliga Nord/Nordost/West/Südwest/Bayern - The first split on the pyramid, clubs playing in the regional leagues are usually semi-professional, but many of them have rich histories and traditions and used to play in higher tiers. They are roughly split by cardinal directions of the german map. Average attendance: 2-3000, but can spike massively in some cases of old traditional clubs being stuck down there.
5. Oberliga - literally "Top League" are the top of the amateur part of the football pyramid. There are currently 14 "Top Leagues", which roughly orient themselves along the borders of german state borders, but not always. Average attendance: >1000
6. Verbandsliga/Landesliga - literally "Association League/State League" are the leagues comprising the aforementioned regional associations, but there is 22 of them, because the city state of Hamburg hosts two association leagues running in parallel. Here is where the clear structure starts to break apart and some associations have different names for their leagues. Average attendance: >300
7. Bezirksliga - literally "District League" is one step above the lowest levels of german football. Its a step in between counties and states in terms of regional orientation. Average attendance: >100
8. to 13. Kreisliga/Kreisklasse - literally "County League/County class" are the lowest tiers of german football. Each german county hosts a varying amount of those leagues and sub-tiers, depending on the number of clubs registered. There can be Kreisliga A/B/C and below it, Kreisklasse A/B/C, with Kreisklasse C being the absolute lowest possible Tier of german football. This is proper grassroots/sunday league football and where the overwhelming majority of average german footballers play. Attendance: Your mom and your best mate

Promotion/Relegation varies greatly between tiers and is often a big point of contention, with often confusing playoff structures to ensure even distribution of promoted/relegated teams between tiers. Between 1st/2nd and 2nd/3rd tier, the 16th team plays a two legged playoff against the 3rd placed team. Further down, explanations would get far too complicated.

4. Cup structure

Finally, there is one more thing that might be very unique to german football culture and structure: Its cups, because they follow a similar structure to the leagues.

Up top, there is the DFB Pokal, pretty much equivalent to the FA Cup or the Copa Del Rey, except there is no 2nd legs. You either win, or youre out. Clubs are auto-registered by being part of Bundesliga or in the top 15 of the 2nd Bundesliga.

But then each regional association hosts their own cups, with a special twist: Winning it qualifies your club for the DFB Pokal as well. Qualifying here comes down to finishing in the bottom of 2nd tier, or 3rd to 6th Tier. After that all those clubs play single-leg games against random clubs from the other tiers among your regional association, so yes, you can have a 3. Liga professional team play against an Oberliga or Landesliga Club.

Finally, there is the Kreispokale, or "county cups" for teams in the 7th/8th divisions. Winning those can also qualify you for the Regional Association Cups.

To come back full circle to just how important football across all tiers is to german culture, the Regional Association Club Finals are all played on the same day of the year as the DFB Cup Final, get broadcast in a huge conference on german state television channel ARD (british equivalent would be BBC One) and draw millions of views every year.

I realize it might be far too long to read at this point, but I hope some enjoy reading it regardless.

Meine Vorhersage vor der Saison:

1. Bayern
2. Dortmund
3. Frankfurt
4. Leipzig
5. Stuttgart
6. Leverkusen
7. Freiburg
8. Wolfsburg
9. Augsburg
10. Gladbach
11. Hoffenheim
12. Mainz
13. Bremen
14. Union
15. Köln
16. Pauli
17. HSV
18. Heidenheim

Meine größten Ausreißer waren da wohl Frankfurt, Wolfsburg und Hoffenheim.