The former VfL Bochum professional and long-time assistant coach at FC Bayern Munich, Hermann Gerland, knows the Bundesliga like no other. For the 60th anniversary of the top floor of German football, the “Tiger” remembers the old days.
Hermann Gerland is a veteran of the Bundesliga. Since his debut on September 16, 1972 in his VfL Bochum’s 2-0 away win at Eintracht Braunschweig, he was active almost continuously in various functions in the top tier of German football until the summer of 2021. Born in Bochum, he once said: “Before you get under the peat, you go through a lot in life.” And it is precisely these fascinating experiences of his career and the old days of the Bundesliga that Hermann Gerland likes to remember.
Back in Bochum, at the beginning of his career, the relationship was still very modest, says Gerland: “Sometimes we came in the morning and first had to see where we were training. Those weren’t grass pitches back then. Half bushes, half ashes – we used to train there. It’s hard to imagine that nowadays! Adidas had a tracksuit for the whole season. And when the 9 ½ shoe was gone, I got the 10 ½. I had one then Trainers that didn’t fit me at all. Let me put it this way: football was a well-paid hobby back then!”
“Medically, it wasn’t so good back then”
Today the footballers travel to all over the world to prepare. That was also different in the past: “Most of the time we went to a sports school in the area for a training camp – and ran a lot more than we do today,” says Gerland. “And the big difference was that our trainer Heinz Höher was alone. No goalkeeper trainer, no assistant trainer, no fitness trainer and no doctor. It was all much, much easier than today. But we trained several times a day and we were still allowed to You drink a maximum of one bottle of water, 0.2, after the unit. Everything else was not allowed. One should, as they said at the time, ‘live dry’. Sometimes they gave us a salt tablet because you sweated out salt too . Then you could gargle with the sparkling water, but your mouth was so sticky, they gave you a slice of lemon – you then bit into a lemon. Medically, from today’s perspective, of course, it wasn’t that perfect back then.”
The text contains excerpts from Hermann Gerland’s column “Hömma!”, published in the current Special issue for the first half of the 2023/24 season in Reviersport
Back then, however, Gerland’s style of play was not medically perfect here and there either. Legendary referee Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder once said about Gerland’s player: “He was a predator. He kicked everything that moved. He also kicked railroad ties.” And indeed, nobody liked playing against him back then. Legend Willi “Ente” Lippens still laments his suffering today: “Whenever I saw Hermann, I said: Look, here comes Quasimodo! That was one of the few I couldn’t play against at all.”
“Bats flew through the stadium”
This was probably partly due to the fact that in the past there was often no or at most one camera in the stadium. And so, according to Gerland’s reminiscences, things were still going well with some away games: “When I played in Kaiserslautern, bats flew through the stadium there. Bats. And then there was a linesman. One of the Lauterers was three meters offside, and he dared to raise the flag. But only once. The second time someone stood six meters away. Grandpa with the crutch, who didn’t agree the first time, said behind him: “You raise it again Draw the flag, boy, I’ll knock the flag down with my crutch! And he didn’t just say that!”
For Gerland himself, there was always only one goal with his club from the Ruhr area: “We, VfL Bochum, were always seen as the number one relegation team, but I was always very sure that we would have nothing to do with it. At that time, Bochum was a team that fought and got along very well with each other. And: The core of the troops came from the region. We hardly had any foreigners. At most from Hamborn, Essen or Herdecke. So of course we also got along with them felt connected to the region. We just wanted Bochum to stay in the Bundesliga. That was wonderful!”
Bochum-born Hermann Gerland was able to experience his personal highlight in 2010 at the great FC Bayern Munich: “You know, I’m an obsessed footballer, but I’ve never won a title. And now I was there when the most renowned club in Germany won a Celebrating triumph. That made me think of my days as a professional in Bochum, where mother had to wash my training clothes, and we players, we were allowed to choose either soup or dessert at lunch. There was only either-or, nobody got both. In I always wanted to be able to say: “Somebody from Bochum played a small part in winning the German championship. And now I was standing there on the balcony and was overwhelmed by the feeling: Boy, you up here – it was all worth it !”