Germany - part 2

TURU 1880 DUSSELDORF 1-0 RATINGER SP.VGG GERMANIA 04/19

Saturday 5th March 2011

Niederrheinliga [Lower Rhine League]

Stadion an der Feuerbachstraße

Well there was not originally going to be a "part 2" to this trip, but like previously stated in part 1 Gary had found a 3.30pm kick-off at nearby Herne, but this was brought forward by an hour or so which made it impossible for us to get there in time for kick-off. This left us with pretty much with one option and that was to find a decent restaurant and chill out for a couple of hours before our flight home. But again Gary came up trumps with a second game, though this I feel was more out of desperation than anything else!!!! We would have around an hour to make to 50 kilometre journey south to Dusseldorf for a game in the Niederrheinliga (Lower Rhine League) between TuRU 1880 Dusseldorf and Ratinger Sp.Vgg. Germania 04/19 at the 8,000 capacity Stadion an der Feuerbachstraße. This should on paper still give us time to get back to the airport in time for our flight home at 8pm local time.

Dusseldorf is the capital of the North Rhine Westfalia region and is an important business and financial centre. It is the seventh largest city in Germany with a population of over 585,000 inhabitants. The city lies at the centre of the Lower Rhine basin on the river delta where the Dussel flows into the Rhine. Every July over four million people visit the city's largest "Largest Fair on the Rhine" funfair. 



city flag (Source: Wikipedia)

The main football club in the city is Fortuna Dusseldorf who play at the Esprit Arena which has a capacity of 54,500. A lot more information on Dusseldorf can be found on a detailed page on Wikipedia which can be accessed by clicking here.

There is very little on the club on the internet, but from what I can gather the club are a merger of various sports clubs in the early part of the 20th century. Firstly on May 10th 1905 Düsseldorf Fußball Klub Union was formed through a merger of three clubs: Vorwärts Düsseldorf, Borussia Düsseldorf and Fußball Club Britannia Düsseldorf. In 1911 they changed their name to Düsseldorfer Sport Club Union. Finally another merger occured in 1919 with two more clubs Verein für Rasensport Düsseldorf and Friedrichstädter Turnverein 1880 to give us the club that is known today.

Official website

Wikipedia page 

club logo (source: official website)

Turu currently find themselves at the top of the table with 42 points from their 18 games played with RW Oberhausen and KFC Uerdingen just two points adrift. Their opponents from nearby Ratingen sit in 4th place, 8 points adrift.

The top 4 (as at 28/02/2011):

1. TURU.............18 13 3 2 35 14 42
2. RW Oberhausen....20 12 4 4 51 24 40
3. KFC Uerdingen....18 12 4 2 45 20 40
4. Ratinger.........19  9 7 3 37 25 34

Statue outside the stadium





Programme cover

Following an easy get away from Bochum we hit road works which slowed us down on the way to Dusseldorf. With kick-off approaching we went past the ground but it was on the wrong side of a dual carriageway, but a risky / required u-turn at a set of lights from Gary enabled us to make kick-off. We parked on the pavement on Auf'm Hennekamp with the locals. As they say "when in Rome". Ticket prices for adults are either €9 for grandstand seating or €6 for general admission. With sitting down for most of the day, whether it be in a car, on a plane or in the stadium @ Bochum we opted for the cheaper of the two options with the match day programme given away free on entry. Immediately to the right of the entrance is a lean-to type shelter that is home to the food and drink stalls. The club did have some merchandise for sale from a portable trailer which included the usual football affair - scarves, hats, shirts etc. There is one main stand along the near side which covers about two thirds the length of the pitch with terracing either side. Along the far side is more terracing that runs along the whole length with Dusseldorf Volksgarten railway station behind the perimeter, while there is nothing behind both goals.

The game was more entertaining than the first, though as anyone who had read the report will know this would have been nigh on impossible. Both teams went forward at every opportunity though neither keeper was particularly tested. In the opening couple of minutes the home side thought they should have had a penalty kick but the referee waved away their protests. I had an excellent view of it and thought Dusseldorf were hard done by. Ratinger's best chance of the half came on 32 minutes when, following a mistake in the home defence Daniel Rehag shot from a tight angle instead of pulling the ball back to better placed team mates. Around the hour mark Dusseldorf were awarded a penalty when a ball over the visiting defence resulted in Miguel Lopez-Torres being fouled. Torres stepped up but the penalty and resulting follow-up was saved by the Ratinger keeper. The only goal of the game came two minutes later when an excellent through ball split the visiting defence and Marko Nikolic finished superbly with a 1st time shot into the bottom corner. Both sides continued to push forward but with no reward and the referee blew his whistle some after some five minutes of stoppage time.

Admission: €6
Programme: Free
Attendance: between 350 and 400 (guesstimate)
Match rating: 2 1/2 out of 5
Beer: €3
Coffee: €2
Bratwurst sausage: €2

A slideshow of the photos taken of the ground and game can be found below:


A trouble free journey then followed to the airport and after Gary handed in the hire car keys we had no issue going through the security checks before getting on the plane. The plan was pretty full and despite only taking around an hour, it was not the best due to a combination of 1) us being tired; 2) irritating kids who are also tired and 3) the cabin crew (who I know are only doing their job) trying to sell you something every five minutes! We landed at 8pm and it took us the best part of an hour to get to the car, the majority of which was stood in a que waiting to go through passport control. Welcome to the United Kingdom :( The drive home was an easy and stress free drive and we arrived back in Leicester some 19 hours after leaving home.

Germany - part 1

VFL BOCHUM 1848 1-1 KARLSRUHER SC
Saturday 5th March 2011
2-Bundesliga
rewirpowerStadion

Today is a first for me with a day trip on the continent to watch football. It all started between Christmas and the New Year when I was messing about on Ryanair's website to see how much a flight would cost between Stansted and Weeze in north west Germany. A price of £30 return (including taxes and charges) was quoted and I mentioned this to Gary and we both booked our flights separately for the first Saturday in March. Gary is a regular traveller to Germany and has visited numerous grounds in the country so was able to point me in the right direction to a couple of excellent websites:

1) Fussball.de and 2) Euro Plan Online. We knew that both Duisburg and Bochum would be at home this weekend but would have to wait until the fixtures were confirmed to see if either would be playing on the Saturday. Once Bochum was confirmed for the Saturday (1pm kick-off) Gary booked the tickets (25 Euros) for us and we would collect them from the stadium before the game. He then found a second game seven miles away in Herne for a 3.30pm kick-off between Westfalia Herne and Duisburg II, but with less than a week before we were to fly out the fixture had been changed to a 3pm kick-off which put a spanner in the works. Not to be outdone Gary's knowledge of German football came to the fore and came up with another fixture for us to attend before our flight home that evening. More of this later.

An early start on Saturday morning saw us depart Leicester at 4.15am for the 105 mile journey to London Stansted Airport which takes around 90 minutes to complete. Nearly the entire route is on the motorway network (M1 and M11) and the A14 dual carriageway. The flight to Weeze takes around an hour and an a half with it landing at 10am local time.

Bochum is a city (population around 375,000) located in the Nordrhein-Westfalen region of Germany. The region itself, usually shortened to NRW is the most heavily populated (approximately 18 million), westerly and economically powerful. It was formed in 1946 by a merger of the Rhine Province and Province of Westfalia. These were two territories of the Free State of Prussia. A year later in 1947 the Free State of Lippe was incorporated into the region. It has a land area of 13,158 square miles and shares a border with both Belgium and the Netherlands. Dusseldorf is the capital, Cologne the largest city, while other notable cities include Bonn, Dortmund and Essen.

NRW Flag

map showing location of NRW

Bochum itself dates from the 9th century when Charlemagne set up a royal court at the junction of two important trade routes. It's first offical mention was in 1041 by the name of Cofbuokheim in a document of the archbishops of Cologne. In 1321 it was granted a town charter by Count Englebert II von der Marck, but until the coal mining and steel industries emerged in the Ruhr area it remained insignificant. A more detailed history can be found on the Wikipedia page by clicking here.

Bochum coat of arms

To be honest I had only heard of Bochum due to its football team and would not have been able to pinpoint it on a map, but it doesn't take long to find quite a bit of information about the town on the internet. From what I have seen and read it does seem a place worth visiting with numerous tourist attractions. These include the City Hall, Railway Museum, Altes Brauhaus Rietkotter (Old Reitkotter Brewing House) and the German Mining Museum. A pfd file on tourism in Bochum (taken from http://www.bochum.de/) can be downloaded here: Discover Bochum. As previously stated we are only here for a few hours so did not have time to have a look round but it is somewhere that I will certainly consider visiting sometime in the future.

VfL Bochum is one of the oldest sporting organisations in Germany and they claim a founding date of 26th July 1848, when an article in the Markischer Sprecher newspaper called for the creation of a gymnastics club. It (the Turnverein zu Bochum) was formally established in the 18th February 1849. For political reasons the club was banned on 28th December 1852, but re-emerged on the 19th June 1860. In May 1904 the club was reorganised as Turnverein zu Bochum, gegründet 1848, with a football section not being added until 31st January 1911. After World War 1 the club merged with Spiel und Sport 08 Bochum to form the Turn-und Sportverein Bochum 1848. A split occured on the 1st February 1924 when the gymnastics section broke away from the other sporting departments under the name of Bochumer Turnverein.

The present day VfL Bochum as is known today was created on the 14th April 1938 when the Nazi regime forced Bochumer Turnverein to merge with Turn-und Sport Bochum 1908 and Sportverein Germania Vörwarts Bochum 1906. Today the sports club has around 5,000 members with the football section accounting for nearly half. Other sports include athletics, basketball, gymnastics and handball.

Before joining the Bundlesliga in 1971 the club played in various regional and local leagues, winning the Regionalliga West title twice in 1969/70 and 1970/71. From the mid-nineties they have consistently been a yo-yo side gaining promotion or being relegated eleven times between the Bundesliga and 2-Bundesliga. A breakdown of leagues competed in between 1939 and 1971 is listed below:

1939-45 Gauliga Westfalen
1945-49 Landesliga
1949-53 2-Oberliga West
1953-55 Oberliga West
1955/56 2-Oberliga West
1956-61 Oberliga West
1961-63 2 Oberliga West
1963-65 Verbandesliga Westfalen
1965-71 Regionalliga West

Their home is the Rhurstadion, which is also known as the rewirpowerStadion due to a sponsorship agreement that ends this year. It was originally opened in 1911 and had a capacity of over 50,000, but this was reduced after various modifications. The stadium was rebuilt between 1976 and 1979 and currently has a capacity of 31,328. The opening game after the building work was completed was against SG Wattenscheid 09 on the 21st July 1979. Ticket prices for adults vary between €11 (terracing) and €35 for the most expensive seats. 

Stadium exterior

Bochum fans

Karlsruhe fans celebrating their goal

This season Bochum currently sit in 3rd place after twenty-four rounds of matches and are only four points behind table toppers Hertha Berlin. Karlsruhe meanwhile are at the other end of the table finding themselves in 16th place and in a fight to avoid relegation to 3-Bundesliga.

There were no problems in getting to Bochum and we arrived with around two hours to kick-off. Parking the hire car was also a breeze as we parked adjacent to an Aldi store near the stadium for free. An added bonus with it being ideal to make a quick exit to get to our second game. On the other side of the road to the Aldi store was a small cafe / pastry shop in which we had a small lunch for €5 which consisted of a cheese cob, hard boiled egg, coffee, orange juice and a cake. Exellent value and it was no wonder they were doing a roaring trade. A short walk was then made to the stadium itself in which we firstly collected the tickets before walking round the perimeter taking some photos. The annoyance occured when I was entering the stadium itself as the security did not like my slr camera and I had to leave it at a security office and collect it after the game. To be honest I found this very jobsworth as there it nothing on Bochum's website that states that cameras (of any kind) are not allowed in the ground. As a note they did not stop Gary even though he was holding his camera like me and once at our seats the security or police did care that photographs we being taken - the police did not even mind him taking a photo of them!!! The stadium is enclosed on all four sides with the majority of the home fans standing on terracing behind the far goal, which was unsurprisingly full. We were in a section that had a few fans of both clubs which were outnumered by police, though probably being next to the terracing which held the Karlsruhe fans had something to do with it.

The game in a nutshell was a shocker. Considering Bochum are going for promotion they were very negative in their tactics. What I am going to write is to make a bad game sound good so do not be fooled. The opening chance came on 50 seconds when an Alexsander Iashvili shot flashed across the Bochum goal which would have given the visitors a perfect start. Bochum took time to get going and their best chance of the whole 1st period came on 16 minutes when two shots (from Umit Korkmaz and Giovanni Federico) crashed against the frame of the goal in the space of five second of each other. Two half chances in the final five minutes of the 1st half came to Bochum, but the first was saved by the Karlsruhe keeper and the second was over the crossbar by some distance.

At half time we asked ourselves if the 2nd half would be as bad as the 1st. Well for the majority of it yes. It was the visitors who were the better side for the better part of it and they who looked like to open the scoring. When they did it was in some style through Nigerian Macauley Chrisantus who hit an unstoppable shot past Andreas Luthe in the Bochum goal on 78 minutes. This finally woke Bochum from their slumber and they equalised with five minutes from time. A free kick was awarded some thirty yards out and North Korean international Chong Tese left the Karlsruhe keeper Kristian Nicht stranded with a piledriver of a strike.

Despite being only half full the atmosphere was much better than for example 30,000 in the Walkers Stadium (Leicester City FC). This is without doubt due to the sections of terracing. The Karlsruhe fans never stopped singing for the whole ninety minutes who (I believe) like most German clubs have someone who orchestrates the singing and does not watch the game.

Admission: €25
Programme: €1 
Badge: €3.75
Attendance: 14,684
Match rating: 1 1/2 out of 5 (mainly due to quality of the two goals)

A quick exit was had and we made our way to the car for game two in Dusseldorf. More in part 2 later.

A few more photos of the ground can be found here: VFLB