Ooooohh, Greece. The land where the sun always seems to shine. The land that brought us Aristotle, Socrates, science, theatre, culture and so on. However, nowadays Greece is rather known for its government’s debts and its shattered economy. However, from time to time the beautiful southern European country makes into the global headlines for other reasons too.
One of them being sports. But ever since 2004 and their sensational victory at the football European Championship in Portugal (however with playing a disgusting kind of defensive football that still has negative impacts on European football up until today. But that’s not the point now, I’ll eventually get back to it another time) these news have never been too positive. Especially the headlines from Greece’s national football league are mostly shocking and or ridiculous. Like this week.
During the top clash between PAOK Thessaloniki and AEK Athens, ranked second, respectively first in the league table, the world of football has been shocked once more by the sheer violence that seems to have taken over this country’s football. After the regular ninety minutes were almost over, the home side, PAOK, scored the alleged winner. But referee Giorgios Kominos decided not to give it due to an offside position. That was way too much for some supporters. They stormed onto the pitch and threatened the referee and the players, who eventually had to hide in the catacombs of the stadium.
So far nothing too special, aye? But wait. Among these supporters there was club president Iwan Savvidis, being escorted by bodyguards and threatening the ref. Still not convinced by the story? Well, he was carrying a f*cking gun at that time. Yep, that’s right. A club president storms the pitch with a gun (that he luckily didn’t pull though) which leaves referee and players with no other choice but to run into the catacombs fearing for their life.
Savvidis is now being searched via arrest warrant and the Greek league will be on hold for an indefinite time, as the national government confirmed today. This has been decided since it’s by far not the first incident of this kind. Greece probably has one of the least stable and most violent football leagues in Europe. Now this is where the violence and the power games have gotten league, clubs, presidents and fans: To a suspended league and to Greek football being the laughing stock of the world again.
Let’s finish our thoughts on this matter with the words of a philosopher. Not one of the ancient greek ones (even though they’d be disappointed of this scenes too, I guess) but with Isaac Asimov who said „Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.“ How true that is for club presidents storming the pitch with a gun.
I just wanted you to know that, unlike Liverpool’s title chances, I’m still alive. However, as you’ve hopefully noticed, I wasn’t able to post lately. This was mainly due to a really bad flu, some vacations I took right after that and my mandatory army service that I have to perform once per year since I’m a Swiss citizen.
This period was after all useful for me as a sports blogger, as I was really in need of a creative pause in order to regenerate and to find the vital motivation for running a blog like this again. As for most of us smaller bloggers, not really being able to reach out to as many people as we feel our posts were naturally supposed to reach, isn’t a fun thing. Yet, just hoping for the internet to magically discover an article that you wrote two months ago and making it go viral, is not how it works.
Now that I’m back, I will more actively try to get this blog, where I wish for it to be. In order to do that, I’d be in need of you and your reactions and experiences. Let me know what you do in order to reach out to people, how do you stay motivated even though your audience doesn’t seem to grow significantly? Also, if you come across any of my articles, let me know if you liked them in the comment section. What would you do differently? Constructive criticism is always much appreciated.
After all, I do blog for the sake of itself and mainly, because I love sports and discussing about it (and maybe a little bit forcing my opinion on people, too). Now that I was forced to stay away from my project for a few weeks, I’m confident of having found my motivation again and feel full of new energy that shall be used to provide more exciting content over the next few weeks.
It’s a thing that all of us amateur football players know: Sunday league football will probably get you injured in a game sooner or later. Being it over-motivated opponents, aftermaths of Saturday-night-drinking, lack of professionality in terms of prevention or just bad luck: football is one of the sports with the most injuries. Whereas suffering a strained hamstring is one thing, severe injuries aren’t a rarity either. Getting injured is a risk that amateur footballers and professionals the like are constantly exposed to – and mostly aware of, too.
How bad things can go proved a game in the Swiss 8th tier between FC Wil 1900 and Henau 2. After a striker of Henau and the Goalkeeper of Wil crashed into each other, the striker suffered severe knee injuries, because the keeper went into the tackling feet-first. A scene as we unfortunately get to see quite frequently in Sunday league football. But this case took an uncommon turn.
Source: Pixarbay.
One and a half years after the game, a Swiss court had dealt with the indictment that the striker decided to place after a knee-injury and after having lost the ability to play football again. The court found the keeper guilty of physical injury resulting from negligence and convicted him to pay over 6000 Swiss Francs: a revolutionary decision. It’s one of the first times that a court ruled over a foul in amateur sports – up until now this has mostly been classified as a simple accident.
The case has raised general questions about the legal situation of amateur football in Switzerland: Is the state of awareness about possible injuries with effects beyond the football pitch (I’m talking about inability to work, costs for medical treatments, depression after an injury, etc.) reason enough for making injuries in amateur football a matter of self-responsibility? Should a football pitch be a platform for juristically untraced violence?
Source: Pixarbay.
Or is it too harsh to convict footballers of crimes and influencing their future negatively due to an accident that happened during sports? Are judges even in a position to judge on a matter like that when they have no visual evidence of the scene? Or is this all an overreaction of our justice system thanks to which we’ll have to deal with hundreds of similar cases now every month?
The discussions still haven’t come to a halt and also made myself and many of my friends who play amateur football reconsider our situation when it comes to injuries on the pitch.
What do you think? Has the Swiss court done the right thing or should injuries in amateur football remain a matter of self-responsibility? Share your opinion in the comment section below!
Sports is, due to its immense popularity, an easy victim for commercialization. Starting with advertising on athlete’s shirts or by providing material like skis or darts that enjoy constant media-attetion, commercialization has never since come to a halt anywhere.
Today, we have to accept events and teams being renamed after donators and companies and traditional English football cups being drawn in Beijing at 04:15 A.M. just for one thing: cash. Of course, only thanks to this money a professional, globally spread sports industry with players or athletes thrilling masses and performing at a level as high as never before, has become possible.
Without sponsoring and commercialization, sports would never be on its current level. However, more and more fans and sports-enthusiasts start to ask themselves the same question: would that really be so terrible, after all?
Especially in smaller sports that still have a close connection to their roots from back when it was just a hobby for everyone participating, people fear about the identity of their beloved sport. As soon as money gets involved, they feel that things change rapidly. Along with new sponsors come new demands, new marketing strategies, new people. Faster, higher, further.
One of the most affected sports, when it comes to commercialization, is darts. Twenty years ago, before the PDC was founded, there were hardly any professional darts players around, that could make a living from their passion. The sport might not have been as much of an event as today, its image might have been a shady one with everyone imagining 40-year-old guys with beer bellies throwing darts through a dusty basement room, filled up with clouds of cigarette smoke. However, the sport still was one thing: Genuine. Honest. Real.
Nowadays, darts players have become famous superstarts, role models if you want. And they make solid cash from their sport as well, if they’re among the best of the world. At a major tournament they can easily win a couple of ten thousands of Dollars. These torunaments, however, are often called „William Hill World Darts Championship“ or „Unibet Darts Premier League“ – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
How far commercialziation could come, gets hillariously demonstrated in this video, made by Unibet, the sponsor of the Darts Premier League. In the video, two top darts players, Peter Wright and Michael van Gerwen get pranked. In a conference room, an actor who presents himself as an official from the bookie proposes several marketing strategies to the athletes. From putting an ad on van Gerwens bald head to making them enter the stage on a horse, one idea is weirder than the other.
Watch the prank video here:
Even if it’s only a PR-strategy, the video has a message: commercialization needs to come to a halt somewhere. We, the sports fans and journalists, the athletes, the oraganizations and also the sponsors need to stay vigilant. Because we don’t want commercialization to ruin our beloved world of sports.
If you liked the blogpost, please share the article with your friends – it would be much appreciated! Also, make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress and please subscribe to my Twitter (@neinsports), Instagram (@Neinsports_Blog) and Facebook (NeinSports) account. Cheers!
Oftentimes, when I talk to people about football, I say that this sport is more than a game. The emotional bond between a fan and a team is something stronger than what onlookers see. To them, football might be just 22 men chasing a ball and getting overpaid for that.
That’s simply not true. You know that when you stood out there on the stands of your local team’s stadium, having the rain pour down on you for 90 minutes and then see your team score in the additional time: Against the odds, against everything. A miracle. What follows is a pure outburst of emotion: Joy, pride, tears, ecstasy and many, many more. It’s when you hug complete strangers that you wouldn’t even greet on the street just because a ball went into a net that is held by a construction of metal. It’s when bonds are formed that are so hard to describe in words.
If you experienced that feeling, and when you’re reading a widely unknown football blog in the depths of the internet, I assume you did, you’ll know what I mean. You’ll probably remember those moments right now. No matter what team you support (ok maybe not Arsenal, just kidding) you’ll have had such moments before. They’re what makes football so special.
But now imagine this not just being your local team beating the league leader or a famous club in the champions league. Imagine that this moment would be one of the few moments of joy and especially of unity that a crisis-ridden nation would have got to enjoy during years of war, violence, fear and lack of perspectives. That’s what happened in Syria this week.
The country that makes the headlines nearly on a daily basis because of its civil war, the terrible crimes of extremist terror groups and the many war sites between countless groups of interests finally appeared in the public eye concerning a completely different matter: Football.
Despite the terrible situation in their home country, the Syrian national team has played a very decent qualifier for the world championship in Russia in 2018 and now, on the last day of this qualifiers, the Syrians would have needed a point against Iran in order to keep their dream alive and make it into the Asian playoffs against Australia.
After being down 2-1 until the additional time, this dream seemed over. But then one of these magic moments, I’ve talked about earlier on, striked. Out of nowhere the Syrians got the ball and could launch one last attack in the 92nd minute of the game. The ball came to Omar al-Soma, who netted it finally. Syria made it.
Source: Twitter
It must have been a moment of joy and unity, that we in the western world wouldn’t be able to imagine. A shattered country trembling together for its national team to keep the Syrian dream alive. And Omar al-Soma making this happen in the 92nd minute. This comeback might not have been as extreme as Barcelona’s against PSG in the Champions League, but to the fans, it meant more. I can promise you that.
Watch the goal and the commentator’s outburst here:
Syrian commentator breaks into tears after Omar Al-Somah's historic goal against Iran. Goosebumps. https://t.co/MSUC2IBCD0
Because in this little moment, many Syrians could forget their sorrows, forget the war and be joyful and proud of their country once again. Assad followers and rebels the like – the football managed to unite huge parts of the country. Surely, there’s still some more people who couldn’t be bothered about football while pursuing their goal of establishing a religious terror state in this region, but they don’t deserve to be talked about here.
The commentator’s breakdown after the goal has gone viral since the game. Hearing him screaming and then bursting in tears just perfectly describes the magic of football. The celebrations in many Syrian cities, whether they were under control of the Assad government or the rebels, proved that football has the power to unite an entire country.
Source: Twitter
For the sake of the Syrian population it would surely be great to see them make it to the world championship. But there’s still a long road to go. After the duel with Australia there would come another playoff against a side from South America (possibly the former World Cup finalist Argentina).
But even getting to this first playoff stage is a vast success for Syria, a country that has to play its home games in Malaysia due to terror dangers and has lost around 40 footballers from the first two divisions in the civil war. And for the country it certainly isn’t just about results – it’s about magic moments like this 92nd minute in Tehran that made the world seem good for just a little while.
This week I was struggling to find a topic to write this week’s column about. I was very busy with work and couldn’t really let my satirical anger dwell. So I decided to cover a topic that was in the back of my head for quite a while now: The English Football League club Forest Green Rovers and their commitment to a green and vegan club-lifestyle.
Firstly, having in mind that I am probably the least-vegan person in the world and would rather stop watching football than stop eating meat (yes that is a commitment), I was shocked and kind of angry that a club would ban all meat products from its menu and leave supporters with having to nibble on a so called “Q pie” – a Quorn and leek pie made with soya milk béchamel, instead of enjoying a hefty sausage with chips and gravy on the stands. Tearing apart football and traditional stadium snacks – I was convinced that the hipsters now had taken over the beautiful game as well. And it made me feel horrible.
The famous Q pie
My first thoughts really were more suitable for a cracker-barrel than for a written blogpost. However, we’re trying to get this pure pub-emotions into a written form in this format, as you know by now. So why not write about a club full of vegan hipsters that only sell vegan food and drinks, don’t wear leather boots and probably don’t even need a lawnmower for their stadium as they could just send out their hippie fans for doing the job and to enjoy a 100% vegan snack after the game?
Because Forest Green Rovers is a project that is far more than just some hipsters trying to play the role of a new, alternative club that pretentiously walks around with a waddling finger towards other teams just because it serves soya and quinoa instead of pork and veal and manages to be successful even without serving meat-containing meals to its players on matchdays.
After doing some research on the club, its owner Dale Vince and the philosophy he’s trying to follow with his team, I decided to write a special edition of my column this week: Because the Forest Green Rovers represent what really doesn’t grind my gears.
Dale Vince, who took over the club back in 2010, is a millionaire who made his fortune from producing and selling green energy. The English newspaper The guardian once named him an eco-warrior and I think this description fits very well. And eco warriors are something this world needs today, more desperately than ever.
Dale Vince
The man, who used to live in a van as a hippie when he was younger and now drives to work on an electrical motorbike, is so refreshingly different from other club chairmen that wear suits, chase money and only see their club as a source of capital but completely ignore its social role model function.
And taking notice of this role model function and using this to promote sustainable and absolutely necessary goals is exactly what makes the Rovers special. In a world that is sadly bur truly more and more focused on profit and hence is exploiting the only planet we have horrendously, only few people realize that actions need to be taken. And one needs to start somewhere. So why not do that in your local football club, show the people that you can live ecologically, sustainably and yet still manage to be successful?
Forest Green Rovers are doing just that. With their promotion to League Two the club from the tiny town of Nailsworth gained a lot of media attention and could already spread its message throughout the UK. If they manage to accomplish their further goals, promoting to the Championship within the next few years and moving into a new stadium that is made entirely out of sustainably grown wood, they could reach out to the entire world and maybe start to influence other clubs, organizations or maybe even governments to start thinking about their ecological footprint as well.
One of them maybe being US-President Donald Trump who lately pulled out of the Paris accord and certainly made a step in the wrong direction with that. In an interview with the Dailymail Forest Green Owner Dale Vince found clear words for the US-President: Trump is a massive source of entertainment. He’s beyond parody. No one could have dreamed up such a character. He’s f***ed up America. Europe is saying, “F*** America, let’s do the climate accord without them”.’
But what exactly is the club’s message that I’ve been praising during the last few paragraphs like a sectarian? The club aims to be the world’s most sustainable football club. They don’t use chemicals on their pitch, they water it with rain water, they have solar panels on their stadium roofs and provide plugs for electrical vehicles on their parking. Then there’s the vegan thing, too.
But all of this, Vince and his club don’t force onto anyone. Spectators can bring in their own food even if it’s not been bought at a local fairtrade organic farmer’s market. On non-matchdays, players are allowed to eat meat, if they wish to. This caused a little scandal at first, as some players were pictured eating meat pies in the streets. They got called hypocrites. But actually it’s the exact opposite of being hypocritical.
Forest Green Rovers are a club that makes a revolutionary approach at addressing socially and environmentally important issues in the world of sports – a platform that has up until now hardly ever been used for this. Even if they get branded as hippie vegans or worse as pretentious hipsters, they’re not. What’s happening in the small town of Nailsworth with its less than 6000 inhabitants is a football revolution that might very well have an impact on how sports fans will see the world they live in. Because, as beautiful as sports is, there’s always more important things – saving the world being one of them.
So, researching on a topic that I firstly found outrageous and ridiculous, I found a very interesting man with revolutionary ideas and an entire club trying to make these happen. For myself, I’d really like to visit their New Lawn Stadium once and have a little chat with Mr. Vince about his visions. Maybe I could even be convinced to try one of those vegan beers there.
If you liked the blogpost, please share the article with your friends – it would be very appreciated! Also, make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress and please subscribe to my Twitter (@neinsports), Instagram (@Neinsports_Blog) and Facebook (NeinSports) account. Cheers!
As you may know by now, I’m from Switzerland. Hence, Swiss sports and sports leagues are of importance to me, whereas most of you couldn’t be bothered about what we alps people do in our national leagues. Fair enough.
This time, however, there’s a story I felt to be important enough to share it with you. Especially because I want to hear your views on it. So make sure to hit the comment section after reading this blogpost!
At the end of the last season in the Swiss Super League the entire board of the eight-times-in-a-row champion FC Basel retired. Not because they were unsuccessful or unwanted but because they felt it was time. Time for the club to evolve and they felt it would be the right time for them to let someone else take over. To them, the club was an affair of the heart. That’s what made them so successful. Eventually, they ended their project at its peak.
Under president Bernhard Heusler and sports director Georg Heitz the club emerged as Switzerland’s strongest football team, which dominated the national championship for almost a decade straight and which managed to surprise in Europe as well. Also talents like Breel Embolo, Xherdan Shaqiri and Granit Xhaka started their careers in Basel during this period which was one of the reasons, the club hit the milestone of a turnover of over 100 Million Euros per year.
As this era came to an end last spring, the fans of Basel decided to give them the farewell they deserved. During the last game against St. Gallen they started a pitch invasion that lead to an interruption of the game. Holding a banner that was saying “Chapeau Bärni”, which means as much as “Respect, Bernie”, thousands of fans floated the pitch peacefully.
Watch the pitch invasion here:
Heusler went down to them, swung a flag of the club and listened to the fans cheering for him. After a few minutes, the pitch invaders left the field absolutely peaceful (ok, one guy stole the corner flag) and the game could go on. Everything stayed peaceful, which can’t always be taken for granted in Basel.
For example, on the 13th of May in 2006, the darkest day in the history of the club, the “Disgrace of Basel” took place. After losing the championship to FC Zürich in the last minutes of the game, there was a violent pitch invasion from Basel fans which had to be dissolved by police. Over 100 people were injured and damage was made. Basel was fined 80000 Swiss Francs and had to play a few ghost games as well. The game against Zurich was the last one, before Heusler, Heitz and their board took over and lead Basel into a new era.
The pitch invasion back in 2006:
What makes this pitch invasion extraordinary is, of course, the fine. The league now decided to sentence a fine of 15000 Swiss Francs for the game interruption. Not too much money for a professional football club. Still, it’s a message. Even if everything went peaceful: A great farewell-story doesn’t void the law.
The question is, should it? Tell us your opinion in the comments below!
What needs to be said as well is that only hours after the fine was sanctionned, fans started to crowdfund in order to pay the fine for the club. FC Basel later thanked their fans for their commitment but insisted on paying it by itself. Only in Switzerland you think? Probably you’re right.
If you liked the blogpost, please make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress. Also, please subscribe to our Twitter and Facebook account or share the article with your friends. Cheers!
Tonight we might witness the last chapter of darts-history that the legendary Phil Taylor will ever write. The sixteen-times world champion from Stoke-on-Trent will face the Scotsman Peter Wright in the final of the World Matchplay. It’s probably his last chance to win another major tournament.
The announcement hit us hart even though we’ve had to be expecting it for years now. After last year’s World Championship and his loss in the quarter-finals against Raymond van Barneveld, Taylor told the media that the next World Championship in December 2017 will be his last. Darts will lose his biggest legend ever after 56-year-old Philip Douglas Taylor will have thrown his last dart on a cold winter night at Alexandra Palace.
And seeing how strong the competition inside the top twenty of the PDC’s Order of Merit has become, this last dart will very unlikely be thrown in the final on the 1st of January 2018. We’ll probably have to farewell “The Power” a few days before and not with the splendour he’d deserve.
Watch what Phil Taylor says before the big game:
Not only with his 16 titles at World Championships, Taylor wrote his name into the history books of this unique sport forever. Taylor was among the few darts players who founded the PDC, the professional darts corporation. Without this organization, the sport would still have failed to emancipate and to reach its current level of popularity and acknowledgement as a serious sport rather than a pub game.
Now today, Taylor has the chance to farewell with a blast. Realistically, he won’t make it to the final at the World Championship, as sad as it is. But today, at his beloved World Matchplay that he’s won incredible 15 times since 1995, Taylor might win the second biggest tournament of the season. What a farewell that would be.
Admired by the crowds like noone else: There’s only one Phil Taylor
Undoubtedly, his career would be glorious enough without this win. But being able to show that he leaves still at his best and has not become a fading star on the skies of the PDC-tour, would clearly be the least he deserves. And after a magnificent tournament, where the doyen has beaten the young generation around the likes of Michael van Gerwen and Adrian Lewis, an almost cheesy last chapter could be added to the Taylor-story.
Come on Power, make us walk in the Taylor Wonderland for one last time.
If you liked the blogpost, please make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress. Also, please subscribe to our Twitter (@neinsports) and Facebook (NeinSports) account or share the article with your friends. Cheers!
Didn’t we all have the dream of becoming a pro in the sports we used to perform as kids? Be it football, tennis or skiing – most of us will soon have figured out, that this will stay a dream. Children being pushed by their parents who were eventually better than us, injuries or simply other priorities were reasons for us to develop a different attitude to sports. You name it.
Today I want to present to you a way how we could still perform some kind of sport in front of dozens of thousands spectators. We don’t even need to sacrifice our lives to it and work out every day sweating, bleeding and grovelling through the dirt.
Most of our preparation would consist of drinking beer. F*cking awesome, aye? Alright, enough teasing for today. The event I’m talking about is the Darwin Beer Can Regatta that has been held two weeks ago. An annually – let’s call it sailing – event, held in the Northern Territory of Australia attracting about 20k visitors to Mindil Beach.
But sailing is a classy sport – If anything, they’d be drinking champagne on expensive boats. What has beer got to do with it? Basically everything. Because the boats in this unique race are built out of empty beer cans, soft-drink bottles and milk cartons. Each competing team builds its own boat prior to the event. Seeing if they manage to float or miserably sink after thirty seconds is part of the event.
Generally speaking, the race is about fun, not results. It’s about people having a good time building the boats (of course, I mean they get to empty countless cans of beers as preparation – that’s what I call a workout!), and people enjoying an event with the character of a public festival.
Some competition is part of the game too, of course. Local fame, glory and a small price money are the rewards for creativity and speed. But mainly, this extraordinary regatta is for a good cause: Organized by the local lions clubs, sponsored by local companies and generating a few extra coins through entry fees and food and drink sales on the site, the Darwin Beer Can Regatta raises money for charity.
The participants compete in several disciplines, including boat judging, kids races, adult races and the famous Battle of Mindil where the boats compete over a hidden item, that can be stolen from one another. Watching the beer pirates trying to operate their boats without having them sink is hilariously funny.
In an eager world of competitive sports this event is a longed for alternation. This is manifested in their Ten Can-mandments that determine the rules of the regatta:
1.Thou shalt enter the event in the right spirit. 2. Thou shalt build the craft of cans. 3.The craft shall float by cans alone. 4.Thou shalt not drown. 5.Thou shalt not take the name of the craft in vain: any craft bearing signs or lettering that may be offensive will be barred. 6.Thou shalt not drift from the straight and narrow and end up at Mandorah. 7.Thou shalt not protest too much. 8.Thou shall honor thy Committee. 9.Thou shalt not commit adultery – nothing really to do with the Regatta, but it gives us an air of responsibility and respect. 10. Thou shalt go back and read the first can-mandment again.
And it involves beer. So what more could we ask for? Anyway. If we ever stood a chance of fulfilling our dream of performing sports in front of a huge crowd, the Darwin Beer Can Regatta is what we want to do.
If you liked the blogpost, please make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress. Also, please subscribe to our Twitter and Facebook account or share the article with your friends. Cheers!
So last week I’ve been to Dublin. Actually just for visiting the city and enjoying some chilled pints of Guinness. On Saturday, those plans changed spontaneously. And I couldn’t be happier about that. Because what I got to enjoy that day was pure football in all its realness. No commerce, just people enjoying the beautiful game in the middle of the town.
The game I visited was a friendly between Bohemians Dublin, currently ranked 7th in the Irish premier division, and United of Manchester, an English non-league team. Wtf? You’re abroad and waste your time watching a bloody friendly between two teams half of Europe has never heard about? Exactly.
The reason for visiting this game was quite obvious. Both of the clubs are 100% fan-owned, which makes them a special part of the European football map. Nowadays seeing a team play where it’s not only about broadcasting deals, shirt sales and overpriced tickets to finance exorbitant wages and huge transfer fees for average players (no offense, Premier League) is something unique.
So I voluntarily spent 10$ for a ticket and got on my way. Just a short walk through Dublin’s residential areas and all of a sudden you can spot the lovely Dalymount Park. Just as the old Arsenal stadium in London this stadium is located in the heart of the city and lets you soak up the whole vibe of this working-class region where football is lived as a religion and the local club is the entire pride. I really missed that.
As I arrived too early, I had quite some time to explore the stadium. After passing a tiny entrance that probably half of the American-Football-Fans wouldn’t even fit through, I entered the most authentic football experience, I’ve ever had.
After visiting the two bars inside the stadium (I’m not talking about business lounges or that kind of crap, I mean proper pubs) I strolled around the stands. Dalymount Park has 4 stands, only one of which was opened that day. Two others weren’t even accessible.
Grass growing on the stands, plastic seats that were bleached by the weather and stone stairs slowly crumbling apart were a sign that the stadium was in a stand of disrepair but still I couldn’t agree more with what could be read above the opposing stand: DALYMOUNT PARK – THE HOME OF IRISH FOOTBALL.
The experience was rounded up by the visitor site, the non-league team United of Manchester. Bringing a couple of hundred supporters with them, the Englishmen were the perfect opponent for that day. Travelling to another country to support your local, semi-professional club in a friendly rather than staying at home and watch the two greats of Manchester, United and City, play on the TV shows the dedication and the love these fans have got in their football-hearts.
They, and this also holds for the home fans, take humble football over glamour and international stars. Why? Because they love this sport.
Seeing these teams play each other made me proud of being a football fan and grateful to see that there still is an opposing world within world football that still is a people’s sport.
Oh yeah, by the way: the game ended 1:2. Quite embarrassing for Bohemians to be honest. But who cares? That game clearly was a statement and not about results whatsoever. Except you had twenty bucks on Bohemians, like me. I’ll never learn it.
If you liked the blogpost, please make sure to follow NeinSports directly here on WordPress. Also, please subscribe to our Twitter and Facebook account or share the article with your friends. Cheers!
NeinSports 