KBHK was an independent station back then. Don't know if they still are since I don't live in that area anymore. In San Jose KCSM ch. 60 was the PBS station that occasionally showed SMIG. although I think they were based in San Mateo. The one PBS station based out of San Jose was KTEH ch. 54, but they never had SMIG as I recall. They did have the English league's Star Soccer, however. Every Saturday night was my "British tv" night as ch. 54 would show Star Soccer followed by "Life And Times Of Reginald Perrin" (something like that), "Monty Python", "Good Neighbors", "Not The Nine O'Clock News", "The Two Ronnies" and four episodes of "Dave Allen At Large" until midnight when the station signed off. Used love watching all that stuff. There was also KQEC ch. 32, which was owned and operated by KQED but no longer exists. They occasionally showed SMIG. KTSF 26 used to have a lot of international programming and on Saturdays would show SMIG followed by an hour of news in German. I used to get the latest Bundesliga scores from there. On Sunday's they would have the Italian sports program "Domenica Sportiva" where we'd get Italian highlights, and then later that night were highlights from Portugal. Ch. 20, then with the call letters KEMO, used to have a 30 minute soccer news show run and hosted by Clay Berling of Soccer America fame. They rarely showed highlights outside of NASL but did include the latest scores from Europe. This was back when the NASL had reached in peak in the mid-late 70s. I'd better stop with the off-topic rambling. Getting too sentimental here.
Re: Those Hard Men of the BL and Their Pantyhose There's photos of a Düsseldorf-Stuttgart game where the Fortuna players are wearing the white ARAG-sponsored Puma kit with red accents. And underneath it, bright red pantyhose
Fortuna Duesseldorf ARAG Unis/That Pantyhose I just posted yesterday about defender Peter Loehr from the Fortuna teams of that period and one of those shots(head and upper body)showed the ARAG name and logo on the front of the shirt. The Soccer Made in Germany match that I saw(Stuttgart/Kaiserslautern)showed the players wearing black pantyhose(which stood out more against the snow, not that this was necessarily a good thing).
In the Wake of the 1982-83 BL Season Schalke got relegated at the end of that 1982-83 season while financially strapped Bochum had to sell several players(Dieter Bast, Wolfgang Patzke and Ulrich Bittorf - in midseason in Bittorf's case- to Leverkusen, Michael Jakobs to Schalke and Bernd Storck to Dortmund). That marked a turnaround for Leverkusen as the club became more of a contender rather than a side annually fighting off relegation.
Gladbach-Dortmund, 12:0, 1977-78 Season, Last Day Jupp Heynckes scored 5 of those goals for Borussia. When I saw that game on Soccer Made in Germany I couldn't get over how absent Dortmund appeared; Gladbach looked like the only team physically present that day. I also seem to recall the game being played in the Duesseldorfer Rheinstadion because the Boekelberg was for some unnamed reason not available.
You and Me Both, Unclesox Oregon Public Broadcasting, I think, had the rights in the U.S. Those rights did become too expensive and the river dried up in 1988. I at that point also came to rely on Radio Deutsche Welle for some kind of connection to the Bundesliga but those folks had another agenda, I believe. I think DW was into things that they could make political if they weren't already so and the BL just didn't fit the bill. After getting frustrated with DW's inadequate coverage I broke that off and went searching elsewhere for a link to the BL which would come in the form of Sportmagazin Kicker, and so it went from there.
Torhagel As discussed elsewhere at these forums, he also got ridiculed by the Dortmund fans who called him Torhagel(Goal Hail). It took longer, probably, for the BVB players to put that nightmare behind them than it did for Rehhagel. One of them - goalkeeper Peter Endrulat - perhaps never fully did. After that shelling he never again played in the Bundesliga.
Uerdingen/Frankfurt Cup Tie I have some memory of that contest. Uerdingen was not in the Bundesliga that season(the 19th of February 1977 was the match date)and so went in as a clear underdog. Mattsson put Bayer in the lead at 23. but 15 minutes later Weidle tied it for Eintracht. The match stayed 1:1 until Neuberger gave Frankfurt its first lead at 51., then at 69. Nickel extended that advantage to 1:3. Friedhelm Funkel pulled a goal back for Uerdingen at 84. then Mattsson's 2nd goal at the 90. minute mark tied it at 3:3. Wloka gave Uerdigen back the lead only 4 minutes into extra time and 10 minutes later Hahn scored the first of his 2 goals to extend Bayer's advantage to 5:3. Hahn's 2nd goal at 120. set the final score at 6:3 for Uerdingen. The lineups for the match werefor Uerdingen)Hesselbach, Lurz, Hahn, Brinkmann, Stieber, Mostert, Funkel, Raschid, Wloka, Mattsson, Riege. Franke came on for Riege at 56. and Klohs replaced Stieber at 69.(for Frankfurt)Koitka, Weidle, Trinklein, Koerbel, Neuberger, Stepanovic, Kraus, Nickel, Grabowski, Hoelzenbein, Wenzel. Reichel was brought on for Kraus at 46. and Krobbach came on for Stepanovic at 96. Yellow cards were given to Uerdingen's Funkel and Frankfurt's Weidle. The trainers were Klaus Quinkert for Uerdingen and Gyula Lorant for Frankfurt. The referee was Juergen Zuchantke from Berlin. There were 20,000 spectators in attendance. The match was a quarterfinal contest in the DFB Cup competition. Does this adequately cover it? PS- thank Fussballdaten.de for making all those statistics available for us common folk.
Lots of Hair in the Bundesliga Lots of players let their hair down in that era. To me that would be a nuisance but I guess that's just me.
SMIG - Wrong Focus? It seems as though a lot of people here treat Toby Charles like he was the star of the show forgetting, apparently, that the real star of the show was whatever Bundesliga teams that were on. One good thing about Mr. Charles - the Philadelphia Inquirer TV section one week had an article about him and it paid him a compliment saying that he wasn't afraid to keep silence(and let the action do the talking)when other announcers would have rushed to fill the void of silence with commentary of whatever sort.
That 0:7 Schalke Victory vs. Bayern Munich Klaus Fischer scored 4 goals in that match. Erwin Kremers, Dubski and Abramczik scored the others. Fussballdaten.de has no indication that any starting Schalke players were out of action in the first half. No cards were handed out nor did Schalke make any substitutions until the 2nd half(Gede for Kremers at 51 minutes and Bruns for Dubski at 81 minutes). That TV looks close to ancient. Not like what's around today.
SMIG Halftime Reports Those SMIG halftime shows(I think reports would be a more accurate description)varied according to what was going on in the match where the reports were included. The more action there was in the match the less time there was for a halftime report. On occasion there wasn't any time for a halftime feature. I always tuned in for the soccer anyway so that wouldn't have bothered me.
As I recall, those "Halftime Newsbreaks" were mainly shown during Bundesliga matches, not during international-type games. There was that one year (around 1981) when they had Kyle Rote Jr. describing skills and technique using a Subbuteo layout as reference during halftime. Jeez, over 100 posts in this thread and I don't think there's been one mention of Evelyn "Champagne" King's Shame.
Re: Those Hard Men of the BL and Their Pantyhose Now I think this was worn to avoid injuries from slipping on frozen ground, not because of wind chills. I think the same is done in American Football, players there also (always!) wear pantyhose to avoid catching injuries from the frozen turf I guess.
Re: Those Hard Men of the BL and Their Pantyhose Today they have latex so they can wear longer tight shorts. You will not see pantyhose in the NFL, well maybe Jeff Garcia (har har). Those pantyhose looked BAD. No excuse there.
Thank's for adding this comment about "Shame". In an earlier post i asked if anyone knew the name of the theme song. No one did...until you posted it!!
I remember reading your post but I thought you were talking about the opening sequence. No idea if that instrumental bit has a title. "Shame" was played at the end during the closing credits, although Evelyn King's voice was never heard. Still, to this day when I hear it on the radio (which is few and far in between) I immediately think of SMIG. How can one think of anything else? If Toby Charles is my hero, then I suppose Evelyn King is my heroine.
1980 Copa de(l) Oro West Germany struggled against the South American teams in that tournament as I recall.
Speaking of the Milkman That brings to mind the time when Mr. Charles was in Dortmund at the Westfalenstadion for the SMIG weekly match and the public address announcer at the stadium called for somebody from Luenen to go wherever or do whatever to which Charles reacted with the comment,"his wife's probably run off with the milkman". Nice.
If Only We Had the Internet Back Then How great it would have been if we had the Internet back in the late 1970s and the 1980s. IMO it would have made the Bundesliga absolutely unbeatable in terms of the combination of product and product coverage.
That Name - Borussia Moenchengladbach Try fitting that name into the average team name slot in your favorite soccer simulation. Only the longest slots will manage to fit it in.
You Wouldn't Be Alone When I was bouncing around the Federal Republic in 1981 I met several younger English travelers. I mentioned Toby Charles to them and they told me they had never heard of him adding that maybe he was(is)Welsh. Only later did I find out that they had it right after all.
A Little Hairsplitting, Perhaps, But... ...Voeller never played for Bayern but did spend some time with Bayern's crosstown rivals 1860 Munich from 1980 to 1982. Schumacher had a spell with the club but not until 1991-92 and then only for 8 matches.
Alan Fountain's SMiG Debut Season If Fountain started in 1983-84 he didn't show up here(in the Philadelphia media market)- along with the rest of the show - until 1986-87 when SMiG was given a makeover and renamed German Professional Soccer(not a very imaginative title but I suppose it worked well enough). In the intervening three years SMiG was allowed to wither on the vine, more or less, as the only matches on were the most boring non-Bundesliga affairs that someone behind the scenes could dig up. At the time I thought the show would eventually be given a mercy killing but it didn't quite turn out that way as we all know only too well.
SMiG Bundesliga Match Delays The delay between when SMiG matches were actually played and when the show put them on was not the same from the first half of any given Bundesliga season to the second half. It might have been as much as a couple of months or so in the Vorrunde but only three or four weeks in the Rueckrunde. I always wondered why that was so.