I'm not sure whether this has been mentioned here before, but I thought this made for an interesting read:
telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/borussia-dortmund/10428828/British-interest-in-Borussia-Dortmund-no-surprise-to-the-men-who-make-the-Yellow-Wall-work.htmlBorussia could rake in many millions more on match day but choose not to.
“We would lose credibility, we would lose loyalty, we would lose the bonding force with the fans. And that would cost us,” says Cramer. “For instance, our caterers asked to increase the price of half a litre of beer from €3.70 [£3.11] to €3.80 [£3.19] and we said that extra 10 cents doesn’t make the difference, why should we increase it? It doesn’t satisfy our people.”
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Dortmund looks great, but I think if I was going over to Germany I would base myself in Hamburg and try and do 2/3 games in the weekend which I believe is pretty achievable from there (@RedPanda wrote a piece on it a while ago).
Could probably take more there than we do for our own away games :0(
Seriously, we've got to start following the German model. Safe standing, bigger capacities, lower prices, better atmosphere, better everything.
West Germany has Dortmund, Schalke, Monchengladbach, Leverkusen, Dusseldorf, Koln, Bochum and Duisberg all within fairly easy reach of each other. A bit further south you could also tie in either of the Frankfurts, Kaiserslauten and Mainz. From speaking to German fans Eintracht Frankfurt could have the best supporters in Germany, they took 10'000 to Bordeaux in the Europa recently.
I went to Frankfurt the weekend before last with my wife when by happy coincidence (yeah right) Eintracht were at home and I got a ticket for their game with Hoffenheim.
It was very Charlton-like in some ways - they lost 2-1, are near the foot of the table and are especially struggling at home.
The crowd frustration at poor defending and lack of cutting edge is the same in any language, but there was still 40,000+ there and the stadium was decent.
It was a lower category game and ticket wasn't that cheap - 35 Euros I think, although that was in one of the higher price brackets and included return train travel from the city centre.
Atmosphere was very good for a relatively low key game, and much of it generated from the standing section behind the goal (which I think is pretty much all season tickets).
All in all, would certainly recommend the Bundesliga experience if people get a chance.
I’ve tried doing some scouting on their official sites but Hamburg’s only offering German (shock horror) and Hannover’s ticket area is down. I’ll be based in Hamburg and will do a day trip to Hannover. Lubeck are away unfortunately.
Hannover v Wolfsburg may be slightly different as its classed as a north Saxony derby. I went to the reverse of this fixture in Wolfsburg a couple of years ago and, although there was no trouble that I saw, there were groups of lads dressed in black squaring up to the riot police after the game so there may be a greater restriction on tickets.