Richard Seamon

A very long time ago, at the tail end of the 70s and when I was still a callow teenager in my home town in Kent, I met and fell in love with the girl destined to be my future ex-wife. Her father was an ex-soldier but was now a civil servant attached to the army and had been posted to what was then West Germany and it wasn’t long before she and her mother had joined him out there. This wasn’t a problem for her, she’d grown up in Germany, but it was a pretty tragic development for a desperate young man with a bushel of wild oats already rapidly fermenting. But I was a persistent bugger and stayed in touch and as soon as my A-levels were over I got my Transalpino ticket and was on the first boat over.

She lived in Lohausen, a north-western suburb of Düsseldorf, West Germany’s fourth city. We used to walk a lot whenever I visited, as you do, and after a short trek south, across some fields (now a motorway) we would find ourselves at the Europaplatz in Stockum. This was a vast concreted area, sparsely planted with single trees and next to the Messe, the huge exhibition centre. More importantly, there was a pub there, usually fairly empty, where we could enjoy an Altbier or six pretty much in private. The pub stood in the shadow of the Rheinstadion, a giant three-sided basket of angular concrete piers that was built for the 1974 World Cup and was a major European athletics venue as well as being the home of the local football club, Fortuna Düsseldorf.

To be honest, you wouldn’t have guessed. As far as I can remember, apart from the odd small poster there wasn’t much to advertise that this was the home of one of the then top football teams in Germany. Fortuna Düsseldorf was always one of those foreign teams that stood out in playground football quizzes because, like Young Boys Berne, Grasshoppers Zurich and the fiendish tongue-twister of near-neighbours Borussia Mönchengladbach, it had an alluring name. At the time of my first few visits, Fortuna was enjoying one of its very infrequent purple patches. In 1978 it had lost the modern German Cup final for the fifth time (it had also lost the Tschammerpokal final, a forerunner of the present-day competition, in 1937) but in 1979 and again in 1980, the team was finally victorious. In 1979 they even made the Cup Winners Cup final but lost out 4-3 to Barcelona in extra time. They’d never done much in the modern German league set-up but that’s not unusual; there are plenty of teams in every country that don’t become champions. I probably would have gone to a match had I not invariably visited in summer or during the Christmas break (or been perpetually broke. Some things never change).

I didn’t really know too much about German football back then. To me, Fortuna were big enough to be well known outside Germany; they were winners and they played in a huge great stadium in a city of half a million (something that always struck me as a bit odd as most large cities over here have two or three teams); all things that would surely ensure their continued presence among the big boys of German football. I moved on, though. The young lady and I got married, had children and a couple of decades later, we separated. Although I hadn’t visited the city since 1991 after her parents moved north and had little reason to visit it again, I still retained a fondness for the place. It was, after all, a venue for good memories.

A couple of years ago I had a quick glance at the German league tables to see how Fortuna were doing. No sign of them in either Liga 1 or 2. Then I googled The Rheinstadion only to find pictures of it being demolished and that the club were playing at their previous home “Der Flinger Broich”, the comparatively tiny Paul Janes Stadion  (Paul Janes being their most illustrious former player) across town in Flingern. What had happened? Although Fortuna were quite prominent in the pre-war and wartime leagues, as already mentioned, their more recent league history had seen nothing in the way of honours and largely because they seem to spend a lot of the time outside the top flight; such is the way with all but the highest achievers in German football. I found them languishing mid-table in the equivalent of what we used to call several decades ago, Third Division North. They’d done a Nottingham Forest on me and tumbled into lengthy obscurity.

 

The German league pyramid system is, for an Englishman, pretty complex and always has been. It’s suffered, if that’s the right word, from the influence of Nazism (and rejection by because the national team weren’t winners), disbandment following hostilities, partition and the re-admission of the eastern clubs and probably more than anything else, from strong regional influences; Germany is after all, divided into states (or Länder) and each had powerful local associations. For a while after the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963 there was only one national division.

Whereas we in England have grown up (at least for the last 50 years or so) with 4 top flight divisions, a “fifth” in the Conference and then regional feeders, the Bundesliga even now features only two national premium divisions before the structure goes all regional. Currently (and I write this advisedly because it’s all going to change again next year!), after Bundesliga 1 and 2, the third and fourth tiers are split into Regionalliga North and South. These leagues also include B teams from the clubs in Liga 1 and 2. Below these are the Oberligen and then it’s largely similar to our own structure.

Promotion and relegation isn’t always straightforward and is not always decided on performance either. Apart from the fairly regular re-organisations involving ad hoc movements to new divisions,  B teams are obviously restricted about where they can play and clubs must also be on a sound financial footing – Fortuna once escaped relegation to the 4^th tier because of a couple of other clubs’ financial irregularities. Fortuna have floated in and out of the top flight with depressing regularity but they have a chance next year as Bundesliga 3 will be formed. If Fortuna finish between 3^rd and 8^th next year, they’ll still be in the 3^rd tier but will have gone up to the Bundesliga. Are you still with me?

Fortuna themselves were in pretty dire straights around the turn of the century and their shirts were even sponsored for a couple of years by Düsseldorf’s second biggest (after the mighty Kraftwerk) rock group, the punk band Die Toten Hosen. This meant the team ran out during that time sporting the band’s emblem, a grinning skill and crossbones, on their chests. In fact, the band, whose name literally means “The Dead Trousers” but idiomatically – and in true nihilistic punk style – more “nothing going on” (which could also be a succinct summation of the club’s recent form) have been willing to put their considerable earning potential on the line several times for their beloved team, even putting a DM1 subsidy on all ticket sales back in the late 80s enabling them to purchase a player, full-back Anthony Buffoe. Well, not quite all of him, they managed to raise enough for a leg. The return to the revamped Flinger Broich meant a better atmosphere for the dwindling crowds, who were becoming increasingly lost in the dilapidated old stadium. Imagine how Queens Park (ave gate 650) must feel playing in the vastness of Hampden Park.  

Things have got better financially, and while you can still buy Toten Hosen related official merchandise the club now sport the logo of the local bank on their shirts and have a full roster of major sponsors. They also have a shiny new 51000 all-seater stadium on the site of the old Rheinstadion, known as the LTU Arena after the international airline based at Düsseldorf Airport. All they need now are the results and support to return. A couple of players of the calibre of Janes and other former favourites Klaus Allofs and Jörg Albertz might help but at the moment they’re in that Catch 22 situation of being an unsuccessful club in a lower division. How do you attract players to get out of that situation? Hopefully the leg-up provided by the new league will be the catalyst for renewed fortune.

At least the pub’s still there.