WSC 175 Sep 01

Günter Netzer recently complained that the Bun­desliga was lacking “personality players who com­mand a big fee”. While the rest of the country pondered the link between Alan Shear­er and the word “personality”, Borussia Dortmund snapped up the Bra­zilian forward Amoroso for DM 50 million (£15.7 million) from Parma.

In other countries, such an incongruous sum – it doubled the Bun­desliga’s previous highest fee – might have triggered the financial mannishness that leads to wage pac­kets piling up in the middle of card tab­les by seven o’clock on a Friday night. And it’s still possible that Bay­ern’s Uli Hoeness, in one of his Viv Nicholson mo­m­ents, might table a bid for Am­oroso for DM 51 million on the eve of Dortmund’s first European fixture of the season. However, it is much more likely that Am­oroso’s transfer fee will, for years to come, remain the Bun­­desliga equivalent of Bob Beamon’s long jump.

One of the reasons for the parsimony might be the infamous Neidfaktor (jealousy factor) that looms large in German society. Ill luck is often greeted with a shrug of indifference and a reference to the affluence of the victim. After a player once got hurt in a game I was wat­ching, an elderly spectator smirked, audibly, and said: “Them Adidas boots cost 399.90 marks, plus VAT, but they’re no good to him now, are they?” If a pair of overpriced daps are enough to make a pensioner risk a beating, it’s easy to imagine the reaction Amoroso will face if he fails to score at least every ten minutes. If he’s wise, he’ll forget all about learning German.

It would be unfair to blame the lack of big names entirely on a sceptical public, however. Despite in­creased television rev­enue, there simply doesn’t seem to be that much silly money flying around German football. The financial conservatism of the clubs can be explained partly by season-ticket prices. They’re ridiculously low. A sea­son ticket for St Pauli, now back in the first division, costs a shade over £100 for 17 games. It’s not as if the bosses couldn’t ask for more: they could demand double and still fill the ground, probably with much the same people as well.

One reason they don’t is that stable fan bases are far from prevalent here. Club supremos know 30,000 supporters would willingly shell out for the first div­ision, but will balk at giving the club even five minutes of their time one division lower down. The worst example of this fickleness is Hertha Berlin. When the club went up a few years ago, their first game attracted over 50,000. Yet there were a lot of people at that match sporting denim waistcoats (the sort that German fans adore) that were still deep blue, un­creased and spot­less, and who had to ask which tube station to get off at. And then suddenly you recalled the games 18 months beforehand, when you’d sat with 10,000 other people in a stadium designed for 75 000.

It is the lack of passion, as well as money, that is responsible for the dearth of big stars. In short, it’s boring. Alan McInally apart, few established foreign stars want to come here. People may point to Jan Koller at Dortmund as an example of the trend being bucked, but if he were shorter and didn’t look like Nicholas Cage’s studious older brother, nobody would take a blind bit of notice of him.

Almost the only attractive thing that the Bundesliga has to offer (in an An­gela Rippon sort of way) is its attention to de­tail. The importance afforded to diet would make even the most ded­icated supermodel seem positively tren­cherman. The strict regulations on attending Ger­man classes mean for­eign players spend more time behind a desk than most university students. And clubs bend over backwards to try to make not only the player, but also his family, feel at home (Eintracht Frankfurt even paid for driving lessons for Rolf Guié-Mien’s wife). But even this sort of mollycoddling, plus the chance to drive your car on motorways with no speed limit, probably just isn’t enough for your average superstar. A meat-and-potatoes life­­style might win you a World Cup, but it won’t have the gour­mets bang­- ing on the door to get in.

From WSC 175 September 2001. What was happening this month

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