Saturday April 24th 2021
Football love without a riot
Schalke is like a beautiful illness
Posted by Ben Redelings
The repulsive pictures from Gelsenkirchen once again brought the wrong “fans” into focus during the week. Every headline about her is actually one too many. Because the majority of soccer fans are different. Creative, crazy and often so wonderfully crazy.
After a turbulent football week with irritating, repulsive pictures from Gelsenkirchen, I want to break a lance for all the other, wonderful, creative and peaceful fans out there who are so wonderfully crazy as Thomas Dragunski from Bochum, who only ” VfL-Jesus “is called:” My wife once asked me who I love more. You or VfL? What does she ask me too? I’m honest! “
The answer from VfL Jesus should be clear – and what happened afterwards. But also Hubert Tecker from Schalke once said fan sentences for eternity when he said: “Schalke is like a beautiful disease. Once you have it, thank God you won’t get rid of it.” Does all Schalke see it that way at the moment? One does not know. But basically the football fan is extremely capable of suffering – and also quite creative in living out his passion.
Clare Smith from Blacktown had to find out too. One day, the proud mother, shaking her head, told an almost unbelievable story: “We named our daughter Lanesra because it’s such a beautiful and unique name. It wasn’t until she turned two that my husband told me that the name came from his favorite football club arsenal – written backwards. ” Tsang Ho Yin Titus from Hong Kong preferred to play with open cards straight away. As a die-hard Leo fan, his daughter’s name could only have something to do with his favorite club. And since the little one was probably conceived after a game of his TSV 1860 Munich, which he and his wife were present at, he named his daughter “Giesing” – after the district in which the TSV is at home. Just like the great pop stars of football, see Victoria and David Beckham and their son Brooklyn.
And while we are on the island: During the 1986 World Cup, an English doctor reported in the “Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine”, one of his patients developed a special rash on his arms, legs and back when he was defeated by his Englishmen against Portugal on TV. The rash came back four days later – this time after England played poorly against Morocco. The doctor’s diagnosis: The rash is obviously a result of the frustration of watching England lose so badly. The patient’s life, as we know that much 35 years later, must have undergone so much strain afterwards. You don’t even want to know what the rash might have looked like after being eliminated from the 1990 World Cup in the legendary penalty shoot-out against Germany.
Thoughts so absurd and real at the same time
Speaking of world championships. For many football fans the longed-for paradise that they would like to experience live once in a lifetime. It was the same with 19-year-old Robert Stery from Perth. In 1978 he really wanted to go to Argentina for the World Cup – but he had a serious problem: the money. Because actually the wedding with his fiancée should be financed from the saved money. But you have to set priorities and so Robert finally drove to South America and said: “I can’t afford both, that’s why I broke up. I’ll see her again when I come back, but in all likelihood only from a distance. She was not exactly pleased with my decision! ” Completely crazy, the young man, the common man would say, but football fans will still show great understanding for Robert Stery from Perth so many years later.
But anyone who now thinks that the life of a football fan just has to be wonderful because he depends in his own world and can escape the harsh reality of everyday life is mistaken. Because the two worlds clash again and again. Seldom has anyone got to the point better than the founder of the “11Freunde” magazine and ntv expert Philipp Köster in the film “Why half past three? Or the love of football”: “And then 10,000 people were in the stadium and we lost 2 : 1. You saw grown men sobbing, young players fell on the lawn and were comforted. And then I come home and there sits a lady from my mother’s literary circle and asks: ‘How did you play?’ Then I said: ‘WE have lost!’ Then the stupid cow says: ‘Why YOU? Did you play along?’ And then they laughed ugly. My mother and the literary aunt. I marched into my room relatively depressed and had fantasies of mass murder. ”
Thoughts so absurd and real at the same time that only a football fan can carry. And that’s why this madness is always looking for an outlet – and not infrequently also when choosing a name for the offspring, as two further examples should finally show. The “kicker” once reported about two extremely fanatical fans on the island. One was a supporter of third division Sheffield United and wanted to give his newborn son all the first names of the eleven regulars of his favorite club. However, his wife knew how to prevent this and reduced the long list to two player first names. But the man was then allowed to hire the captain of the team as a godparent.
And another follower pushed so much frustration that he may have thought: a suffering shared is a suffering halved. And on this whim he wanted to call his son “relegation”. That means in English: descent. And since his club was just in the middle of a relegation battle, the name made sense to him. But the office did not allow him to do this. But of course that wasn’t a problem for the crazy young father. He immediately designed another variant. And so the boy’s first name is now: Relly Gation. Football love can be so wonderfully crazy – if you have all the cups in the closet.
.