Had you been perusing the football news small print recently you might have read that Borussia Dortmund’s home attendance for the German league game against Hannover 96 was 80 500. Whereupon you might have rubbed your eyes, squinted and looked again. No, there was no mistake.
This week Dortmund played Hamburg at home and once again the attendance figure at the Westfalenstadion was the highest anywhere in Europe. Dortmund’s neighbours, Schalke 04, hosted Bayern Munich and the crowd exceeded 60 000 — beaten only by Real Madrid, Manchester United and Milan versus Juventus at the San Siro.
For the first time, average attendances in the Bundesliga are higher than they are in the Premiership, La Liga and Serie A. Before this week’s games the average crowd in Germany was 36 492 (up 2 500 on last season); in England 34 816; in Spain 29 345; and in Italy 26 084. The driving force behind these record Bundesliga statistics has been provided by the far-from-fashionable but solid as steel Ruhr Valley giants Dortmund and Schalke 04, whose stadiums are only 32km from each other.
Dortmund, German champions last year, are having a miserable season. Having failed to make it past the preliminary stages of the Champions League, they lost 3-0 in the league two weekends ago and were knocked out of the German Cup. Most of their star players — including Czech Tomas Rosicky and Brazilian striker Mãrcio Amoroso — are out, either through njury or suspension, and they lie fifth in the table, six points behind leaders Bayer Leverkusen, having lost three matches out of 10.
Yet there are no regrets about having increased their stadium’s capacity from 66 000 to 83 000 over the European summer. So far this season Dortmund have been racking up average home crowds of nearly 78 000.
Schalke 04 lie 11th in the table and were also knocked out of the cup on Wednesday (an amazing 7-3 defeat by SC Freiburg, the last four Freiburg goals being scored in extra time). But never mind the cruel vicissitudes of football fortune, 61 150 Schalke fans — about the same number as go to watch mighty Bayern Munich — have been turning up regular as clockwork for every home game at the new Arena AufSchalke, venue for this season’s Champions League final. Such is the lust of the Schalke 04 faithful for the not-always-beautiful game, that home- crowds for two InterToto Cup games exceeded 55 000.
And there lies part of the explanation for the German boom. In the neck of the woods where Dortmund and Schalke 04 play — as well as VfL Bochum, Borussia Munchengladbach, Cologne and Leverkusen — people are as fanatical about football as they are in Buenos Aires, Rio or Milan.
In fact, the best analogy might be with the north-east of England: places such as Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Sunderland, where people’s existences — male people, at any rate — revolve around football as the Earth revolves around the sun. The Ruhr Valley is cold during most of the football season and life does not offer too wide a range of alternative delights.
As Franz Beckenbauer says: ‘Football is Germany’s national sport, but there are a handful of cities where the fans are totally and utterly devoted to the game. Dortmund is one of those cities.†But the reason why attendance figures are going through the roof is that Germany is preparing for the 2006 World Cup and the clubs, which are not only more prudently run than elsewhere in Europe but are encouraged and assisted by the national football authorities, are providing their supporters with ever more seductive environments in which to indulge their life’s passion.
They are building not only bigger, but more comfortable, state-of-the art stadiums. Brand new ones have gone up at Hamburg and VfL Wolfsburg as well as Schalke 04. Bayern are building a new one, too. Extensions and improvements have been made at VfB Stuttgart (where the club’s recent successes have raised average gates by a third, to 42 000, over last season’s) as well as Dortmund.
The allure of football in Germany is becoming ever more irresistible. As Andreas Kroll, head of the 2006 World Cup Cities and Stadiums Department, is very happy indeed to point out.
‘Rapid modernisation†of the stadiums is the main reason why Germans are flocking in ever greater numbers to football matches, he says. Bigger, safer, larger video screens, better roofs, more comfort and — a point to which Kroll draws proud attention — wonderfully improved ‘rest room†facilities. It all adds up, injecting more warmth into the relationship between fan and club.
‘Fans have changed,†Kroll says. ‘They treat the stadium as if it’s their own living room. The degree of identification with ‘your own place’ has certainly been going up.â€
All this, and tickets cost only a fraction of what the top English clubs charge. You can get in for £6 at Dortmund, where the most expensive seats are £29. At most German stadiums you can buy a ticket for £10 or less.
Another reason for the crowd boom is that the Germans are getting excited about the World Cup, just as the English would have done had their own 2006 bid not been such a fiasco.
Having performed astoundingly in 2002 and with German league football gathering momentum and excitement as never before, they fancy their chances of reeling in the biggest trophy of all for the fourth time in 2006.
And reminding the world of something they sometimes forget: that after the Brazilians, nobody has a more impressive record in the international game. —