The Team they Love to Hate! As previously mentioned, this is an excellent article on the Leverkusen: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/feature?id=265711&cc=5739
Well..this is getting hard. Bayer is a bunch of corporate goons. Bayern is the Man Utd of the Bundesliga. My German club and I will find each other one day.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow...panicfc these are no real supporters as they just follow the success. the fc koeln will always be way much bigger than leverkusen. even in second league they had more spectators in stadium, than the capacity of leverkusens stadium is.
Re: The Team they Love to Hate! Some things in this article are true, some things are false. The author is a guy, who followed Gladbach in their prime, which is easily recognisable in the article. It’s true, Gladbach is extremely popular among the people watching soccer in the 70s; however, the club has no meaning to younger and modern fans from today. Consider that Gladbach stands for tradition, you will understand his personal clash with Bayer Leverkusen.. His observation that the attendance in other stadiums is happy when Leverkusen allows a goal, is partially true. For sure, Bayer is hated among traditional fans and idealistic fans – these are the guys you will mostly see in the terraces. Those guys want to see them lose. The celebrating of goals on other pitches also depends on the constellation at the top, e.g. Bayern is much more hated than Leverkusen (as he said), and I even dare to say that in 2002 the majority wanted Leverkusen to win the title (because of the beautiful soccer they were playing) and rather saw Dortmund as accidental winner of the championship. His dividing of the fans in three categories, is pure crap. For sure many like Calmund or at least have highest respect for the work he has done, but it is safe to assume that nobody will resign as Leverkusen fan after Calli retires in 2006 (but the whole league will miss their biggest media pro). And Coaches being fans of Leverkusen is ridiculous to say the least. Almost the whole soccer-nation was amazed by Leverkusen’s offence soccer played under Daum, the first season under Toppmöller and meanwhile under Augenthaler at least in the home games. With this kind of – in Germany unfortunately widely uncommon - soccer you are naturally recruiting a huge number of fans (look at Hannover today – who would care about them if they didn’t play such an amazing offence soccer that brings them huge popularity?!?). And the pity factor from distanced observers is absurd – distanced observers usually go for success and hardly know anything about the other clubs, let alone the way of playing. Naturally there is always lots of ‘Schadenfreude’ if someone doesn’t reach his aim. That’s what Bayer has to face whenever they miss a title. That’s what Bayern has to face after every lost game. That’s what also a popular club like Schalke had to face after celebrating their five minutes championship. Fans try to tease the opponent wherever they can, that’s not different when Bayer is the opponent – it’s just that Bayer has a huge history of failed attempts and because of that there is more attention to the fan chants against them. Back to the article, the next sequence makes giant sense: he says that Bayer signed Brazilians since the late 80s and East German players after the reunification – but they did not promote until 1979 despite of the huge investment… Quiz question: where do we see a little logical problem? Besides that the signings were very clever and not negative at all, Bayer was nothing until Calmund started there. It is an absolute lie to claim that Bayer always provided the club with tons of money to urgently promote to Bundesliga and become a top team. When Calli started there, the stadium was an entire ruin, probably worse than St Pauli’s Millerntor today. Club without supporters is a prejudice. Kicker recently had a report about fans and surprisingly found that Leverkusen ranks in the top third in Bundesliga regarding the number of fan clubs, and somewhere in the mid-table regarding the number of organised fans, who alone are more than the capacity of the stadium is. Regarding the booing at the cup final: a) in 1993 Bayer was still at the beginning of the development and they had just a few fans compared to today; b) they were playing lousy; c) the final was in Berlin and defeating a team from Berlin doesn’t cause too much attraction there. Regarding the La Coruna game: what a giant surprise that ‘only’ 156 fans flew to Spain on a Wednesday… That’s a consequence from Bayer having more modern than traditional fans, something other clubs will face in the future as well. We’re living in the age of media, every game can be watched on TV at home, it’s cheaper and it doesn’t waste time – there’s no need for travelling to games that are far away.
Re: Well..this is getting hard. Bayer also is a club that supports Yanks more than any other club in Europe. They are an innovative club, and well run. They did have the corporate involvment some years past, but now they are on their own to succeed or fail. Every club has its negatives, but few have the positives of a Bayer.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow...panicfc Yes, I'm talking about German teenagers from Cologne. I didn't know Koln's stadium was larger than the BayArena. I guess that makes sense given their superior history.