RE-VISITING AN EASTERN BLOC GEM
WE hear a lot about the democracy of German football and its user-friendly ticket policies, but not everywhere is it cheap to watch the game in the home of the world champions.
I paid no less than 18 euros to watch a game in Regionalliga Nordost, which is below the three division main structure – effectively Non-League football in Germany.
Admittedly, the game was between Berliner FC Dynamo and Wacker Nordhausen. You’ll recognise the first name listed there as Dynamo Berlin were the dominant force in East Germany before Die Mauer came down in 1989.
Unfortunately, the club was very unpopular during the old DDR years, playing in front of 8,000 people even though they were a winning team. This was largely because Dynamo had become the plaything of the Stasi and its chief, the notorious Erich Mielke.
Mielke and his colleagues made sure that Dynamo were perennial champions of the Oberliga and between 1979 and 1988, they won the title every year. It was no coincidence that just as the DDR collapsed, Dynamo’s stranglehold ended.
As Germany united, the club changed its name to try and distance itself from the past and it ended up as Berliner FC Dynamo.
Like all of East Germany’s leading clubs – students of the game will remember “crack” clubs like Carl Zeiss Jena, Lokomotive Leipzig, Magdeburg and Dynamo Dresden – Dynamo Berlin suffered after reunification. Eastern German sides have been rare in the Bundesliga and most of these old names from the DDR are now playing at a low level.
Regionalliga Nordost has the second strings of Hertha Berlin and RB Leipzig as well as Lokomotive, Carl Zeiss and Energie Cottbus, who spent a brief period in the Bundesliga.
Iconic
Dynamo do not have the home of a Non-League club – far from it. They play at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark, a stadium that was opened in 1952 as East Berlin’s sporting showpiece. Jahn, incidentally, was considered to be the “father of German gymnastics”.
Like many Eastern Bloc stadiums, the sportpark has huge tripod-like floodlights, almost resembling something from a sci-fi film. When the lights were switched on, nesting birds, which had buzzed around the lamps, were sent into the Berlin dusk.
In the near distance, you could see the famous Fernsehturm, the DDR’s attempt at showing the west that it was a techno- logical hub. In contrast to the DDR days, Dynamo have something of a reputation for having right-wing supporters and even for the game against Nordhausen, there were vans of police outside the ground. I asked if they expected any trouble, and I was told, “a bit… maybe.”
I didn’t see any hint of problem at all – the Dynamo fans were in fine voice all evening.
Perhaps it is the police bill (apparently, when Hamburg played there in the cup recently, the place was packed with law enforcement officers) or the rent on the stadium that drives the price of football at Dynamo up.
They may be a cult club, but attendances are not especially good – I was told by a steward that the Nordhausen game might attract 2,000 – 2,500 people, but actually it was just over 600 (last season, they averaged about 1,100). In a 24,000 capacity stadium, that doesn’t go a long way, although there was plenty of room to spread out!
So it’s not all packed stadiums and tickets that are cheap as Bratwurst in Germany. That said, a visit to an iconic club in an iconic stadium in one of Europe’s most vibrant and exciting cities is worth 18 euros of anyone’s money.
It may not have been Bundesliga quality, but on a comparison with Non League in the UK, pretty good stuff. The score, by the way, was 3-0 to Dynamo.