Search: 'Kaiserslautern'

Karsten Blaas explains how indecision over fireworks at German football matches has caused fights between ultras and police on the terraces

For their live coverage of the second round of the German cup, played in late October, the TV station ZDF chose Borussia Dortmund’s encounter with Dynamo Dresden, east Germany’s best supported team, who are now back in the second tier after a decade of decline. What happened on the pitch was as dull as had been expected. Dortmund won a lacklustre game 2-0. The events on the terraces and outside the ground, however, had a long-term impact, raising questions about police tactics and the role of the ultra movement in German football.

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Paul Joyce studies how the Berlin Wall divided the city arbitrarily and changed the lives of clubs, players and fans

Although post-war Germany was divided into two states in 1949, football clubs on both sides of the border were determined to maintain sporting relations. Despite political tensions between capitalist West Germany (FRG) and the socialist East (GDR), numerous cross-border friendlies took place on public holidays in the early 1950s. These proved massively popular with supporters on both sides of the divide. In October 1956, 110,000 East German fans filled the new Leipzig Zentralstadion to watch 1.FC Kaiserslautern, whose team contained five players from West Germany’s 1954 World Cup-winning side, beat SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt 5-3.

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Despite a respectable performance in South Africa some think the US could have achieved more. Ian Plenderleith explains why

When US coach Bob Bradley substituted Ricardo Clark 30 minutes into the team’s final World Cup game against Ghana, he whispered intensively into the player’s ear for several seconds before packing him off to the bench. As Clark’s sole contributions in his half hour had been to lose possession in the lead up to Ghana’s opening goal, and to receive a yellow card for an amateurish late tackle, there was much lively speculation about the words Bradley had directed towards the central midfielder.

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With the Berlin Wall coming down in October 1990, Paul Joyce recalls the first Bundesliga season where West Germany's teams met those from East Germany

The long-term significance
After reunification in October 1990, this was the first season in which teams from the former GDR joined the West German football pyramid. Only two East German sides (Oberliga champions Hansa Rostock and runners-up Dynamo Dresden) were allowed into the Bundesliga, which was expanded to 20 clubs. A further six GDR clubs entered a regionalised second division.

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Directors of football are a little-loved breed. Paul Joyce looks at changing attitudes in Germany, where despite successes many clubs now have doubts

Kevin Keegan is hardly unfamiliar with outside interference in managerial affairs. His move to Hamburger SV in May 1977 was engineered by one of the Bundesliga’s first general managers, Dr Peter Krohn. A football layman who saw sport as “show business”, Krohn changed HSV’s blue shirts to pink to attract female customers and made the team ride into the stadium on elephants. Viewing himself as more important in the club hierarchy than “overvalued” coaches with “insufficient school education”, Krohn’s meddling meant that HSV finished only tenth in Keegan’s first season.

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