No, it's utter crap. Bayer Leverkusen are the entertainment branch of a multi-national company. And even the Bundesliga clubs who aren't really aren't any more democratic than the People's Republic of China these days. The Bundesliga is to sports what Disneyworld is to sight seeing.
No it isn't utter crap. Why are you so bitter? Try having Gillett and Hicks come and run your club and you'll soon appreciate how well run the German league is. With financial success comes change, that's just a fact of life, it is how you adapt to this change and welcome it if it is done correctly that matters. Bayer Leverkusen were a club made by factory workers after they started a petition. Over here you could liken them to Vauxhall Motors. It would be easy to dismiss this and say that they were a commercial entity but the fact of the matter is that just as I have at work and school in the past, 170 lads wanted and campaigned for a football team that has grown from that day. You can look at things however you want but my perception is that Bayer are a lot of what is good about football both on and off the pitch. Multi national corporations are going to take over and that's not Bayer's fault it's the people who were supposed to be safe guarding football and its non financial interests. Bayer have been as far as I can see excellent owners who allow the club to be run as it needs to be and the club fomr a once outsiders perception is welcoming and the fans of that club (what really matters) that I've met or spoken to are great and happy with the way they are treated and the way the club is ran. Nothing else really matters.
You can still see a BuLi match for a decent price and they have terrace standing areas for dirt cheap. The BuLi is the most profitable in the world. The CNN article notes that the EPL brings in far more revenue, but their inflated player salaries bring down the profit margin. I'm not a pollyanna. The BuLi is not perfect by any stretch, but I prefer it over the EPL and any other league for that matter.
Seats for a Bundesliga game aren't much cheaper than for a Premie League game. Cheapest regular seat (adult): Stoke City - 30 Euros Manchester United - 32 Euros SC Freiburg - 30 Euros Bayern München - 30 Euros The only difference is standing, as there are no stands in England anymore, but with 15-20 USD those aren't really dirt cheap.
Because German football has gone down the shitter during the last 15 years. Clubs are dying left and right, but nobody notices it because of the oh so shiny Bundesliga and their oh so glorious franchises. Keeping your integrity and not selling out would have been an option. I a local coffee shop is bought out by Starbucks I won't continue calling them mom and pop business either. Bayer fans are tools. They pay for the privilege of doing free promotion for thei corporate masters. Their choice - I'm not going to cheer for an aspirin advertisment, so what do I know.
He wrote German football, not the Bundesliga. And if you take the rest of his quote, you are supporting his point with your reply.
I know, but I don't want to talk about the entire German system. This is about EPL vs BuLi. Admittedly I don't know much about the German leagues below the BuLi, apart from attending a few Hösel matches. Alex you're probably right about the lower leagues being in trouble. But the fact remains, the BuLi is MORE profitable than the EPL at the moment.
Well, he asked my what's my problem with the Bundesliga. And the main reason is that the Bundesliga boom of the 1990s has had a horrible effect on the German football pyramid. Germany is unique in so far as the country has over 900 clubs who have played first division football in their history. But today everthing is concentrated on a few big clubs. And frankly, every new Bundesliga fan makes things worse. However, even that aside - I also don't get the entire Bundesliga vs. Premier League thing. Fans taking pride in the fact that their leagues is more profitable is simply a rather foreign and puzzling concept to me (yeah, financial stability is a good thing, and all... but taking pride in a corporation [that isn't yours] making more money than another corporation [well, technically multiple corporations]?).
You can keep your small club mentality and take it to the non corporate leagues and enjoy the game at grass roots, when I want to do that I watch football on the local park I don't pay for the privellege to watch crap teams who only have "integrity" because there is no other option for them. You want to sit there on your high horse calling me and other lovers of the game "tools" for simply wanting to see the game played at a high level then you have no concept of football whatsoever and are too busy trying to cling on to an ideal that NEVER existed. Even from the invention of football clubs had to have owners and those owners looked for the earning potential of the clubs. Football should be something that brings people together so you clearly have no clue. You're no more than a small time club follower who likes to think that makes you better than anyone else, I've met your type before and you my friend are the tools. I'd follow Liverpool to the conference if that's where they went but it wouldn't make me any better than a fan that didn't have to do so. Salaries and tranfser budgets on the other hand.... that's something that should be assessed.
When Uwe Seeler captained Germany in the WC 1966, he had a day job as a sales agent. The 1954 WC winning side had factory workers on the team. Of course the situation is completely different these days - but you can still see pretty good games with semi-pro or amateur players. And I don't reall blame the players anyway. It's the great of clubs that created the situation. All you ever hear is that they need more money to stay competitive. Why? I'd be far more impressed if they had said in the early 90s or so: "screw it, we'll do our thing and don't take part in this money making scheme". The best players would have left for other leagues, but there'd still be a nice, decent German league. Who cares how the league compares to Italy as long as we have fun games. No, they didn't. Football in Germany was amateur until the 1960s/70s. No owners there. Private ownership in German football did not exist until the late 1990s (I think 1999, Bayer Leverkusen was the first). "Clubs" like Bayer Leverkusen or Wolfburg are pretty much franchises. Those I have a problem with. Liverpool is fine by me. Nobody likes bandwaggon fans, but I'm sure there are thousands of Liverpool (or Bayern, or whatever) fans who care more than I do. More power to them, not my business - especially if people are actually from Liverpool or whatever. If I was, I'd be a fan of the club too. As for Bayer being great owners... what happened to Bayer Uerdingen and their fans?
The majority of BuLi supporters would take issue with this, as the quality of play would drop significatly. If that's how you feel why not just follow the lower German leagues or find a league with that approach?
Well, I think by now the ship hs sailed. I still don't think the majority of fans would turn their back on the league (instead of averages of over 40k we might get back to the time of 25-30k), and quite a few old school fans would like it (I guess, at least - the step would get rid of all major problems the hardcore fans protest against, the question is if they would walk the walk then). But yeah, by now things won't go back unless there is a major financial crisis hitting football, But at least I want to offer a differing opinion among the Bundesliga love here . Personally I don't follow the Bundesliga much anymore, so I'm fine. But I was a hardcore fan in my younger years (not so much of the stadium going variant - I went to third and second division games up to ten times per season maybe, and watched Bundesliga/European games on TV), but I read all books on the history of German football I could get my hands on, I kept my own notes and statistics (well, I basically just wrote down what the match reports in the papers [pre-internet] said, but it felt better to keep track on it myself ), and I thgought it sucked that I had no talent at all for sports. And that's exactly the reason why the development makes me sad. But it doesn't really affect my life in any significant way, and I still enjoy posting on BigSoccer, despite what it might appear like - other than that and following the German third division and below football has been mainly replaced by other hobbies, though.
Happy to see i wasn't the only wierdo out there ....primarily on german football but i kept up and read and talked to knowledge of most leagues. I keep in touch with what it's like for the people in germany still, but since I didn't live there I don't see the state of the amateur clubs. But I don't really have much passion for the top leagues and I hardly watch games on TV anymore. I've been accused of having no knowledge because I've openly said I'm here "for the lulz", to follow the nationalelf (which still somehow manages to capture the imagination if you focus on just the idea of international football) and poke some fun at the bayern fans. But yeah, the top flight game doesn't stir much at all in me anymore. The biggest joy is still playing, which I was lucky to be good at.
Alex, I understand where you're coming from even if I don't agree with you 100%. There is something to be said for a league with lower salaries and profit/revenue. I am a fan of the MLS and there is a connection to the players that you will not find in the top Euro leagues. For instance, our star player was injured a few weeks ago and sat with the supporters. He sang songs and banged the drums with us. Can you imagine someone like Ribery or Robben doing that? Not on your life. It's also quite common for players to BBQ and party with supporters. I want the MLS to improve but not lose what we have. Luckily this is the USA where soccer is the #5 sport so I'm not too worried about that. BuLi is caught between a rock and a hard place. It's not ideal, but I do prefer it over the EPL way of business. At this point changing the BuLi system would result in a complete overhaul of talent. It would not be pretty. Take a look at the ownership structure of this club. They're an NFL football team from Wisconsin. My mother is an owner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States.
Didn't know that about the packers. I'm a Jets fan but have time for the Broncos and the Pack, especially Aaron Rodgers. Revis > Woodson though whether he returns to the Jets or not.
I'm a Vikings fan, born and raised in Minnesota. If you ever get a chance do yourself a favor and go to Green Bay for a game. It's surreal
Since we're talking NFL.... Geaux Saints!!! WHO DAT!! === I love the lower division games. I went to Germany and saw Osnabrück gain promotion vs Union Berlin from the regionalliga and saw FSV Frankfurt gain promotion from the Oberliga in the same week. Good times... Reminds me of MLS and USL, just with better tactics.
I wrote that artice 2 years before your commented on it and now almost 6 years ago. I obviously made many mistakes. Part of that being lack of resources to understand things fully. But this is the kind of response that led me to quit. I would get grilled for everything and get maybe two positive responses for every negative one. I remember erasing most of the comments on that article back in the day. For some reason, we feel that it's okay to be so juvenile and mean to anybody who posts something on the internet. I was a huge fan trying my best for free. That was all. I wasn't some professional writer. And despite that, it was used as the basis of many articles on the net and much of it has proven to be pretty accurate. But this is why we don't get to have nice things. I have a real life. Being flamed by trolls on the internet was never worth the hassle. I know I was only a menial writer. But given time, maybe I would have been pretty good. But we'll never know. I bet you are probably some average guy in real life who is nice. Why do you feel the need to be such a creep on the internet? Do you get off on it? Or do you just feel the ability to overcome your lack of power in real life by being so off-putting and condescending in a virtual one?
Um, hi there, guy. Nice to meet you I guess, since I have no idea who you are and all. I am sorry your blogging career got cut short. A word of advice: if you publish something people might criticize it. It doesn't really matter if someone does something for free or makes the big bucks with it when it comes to judging the end product. You posted that article on a site that promises "in-depth coverage of the [Bundesliga] in addition to expert analysis and news". Without re-reading the blog post, it seems I thought that article fell short of it. Since there aren't that many options for non-German-speaking fans of German football I tend to concentrate on the flaws, in the hope to counter at least some of the popular myths out there. I am not trolling, since I actually mean and believe what I say. I can also be kind of an asshole and a know-it-all (and I am not that different in real life), but I am sorry if you felt hurt by anything I wrote. I only ever talk about the work (most of the time at least), not the author. I admit, I would probably be slightly more diplomatic in a face-to-face discussion compared to talking about an article on the internet by someone who is just a faceless username to me. And I definitely do get off on all that internet posting.
It most definitely fell short. I was one writer for that site and I always openly asked to be helped in my learning process. But never was. I was usually just treated to nasty (and yes your posts were) rebuttals like yours based on the pedantic and obscure. But you saying you're a bit of an asshole doesn't make things better. The fact is that you know and don't make an effort to make things better. That's not an asshole, that would be dubbed borderline personality and maybe full blown narcissistic personality disorder. I guess we can all be glad you are a troll rather than a serial killer. And concentrating on the flaws is okay if you are being constructive. I could have learned a lot from my mistakes. I desperately wanted to. But I was never going to learn from all the people like you that are only in it to tear down somebody else. Crab in the bucket syndrome is what it is called in African American circles. So I won't return, and I don't care about your excuses. And I've learned to loathe football fans. It's funny how one can actually still like the game without engaging the plethora of scum that suck at the carrion of the game like a parasite. So carry on. You don't make the world a better place. But you sure are the king of your small domain. And that's mighty enough for some.
Your welcome, I guess? I think it sucks you had a negative experience. I've no idea who you are, though. I years ago wrote something somewhat harsh about an article you wrote for a self-declared journalistic blog even more years ago. But if you put your work out there, people are under no obligation to say nice things about it. People will read the article who don't know who you are. I didn't comment on some livejournal post or some forum post, but on an article on a site that says it's run by a professional journalist and aims to offer in-depth analysis. I don't know what else happened to you then and I hope you feel better now. Let it go, focus on thing that bring you joy. All the best, and have a nice life and stuff.
Good point and we can see Bayern Munich have decided to built a mosque to help Muslim footballers perform their prayer Nice gesture from Bayern Munich, especially since they could've just used any room and spared themselves the expenses of getting the Imam and religious lecturers.
The one reason the bundesliga cant and will never be as good as premier league. 1. Bayern Munich the best team in the league just bought the two best players of the second best team. It makes the league a one team league. []__[]