Einmal Löwe, Immer Löwe

It is been about a year and a half that i moved to Munich and …it is been about a year and a half that I want to attend a football game in the new, design and changing colours Allianz Arena Stadium.

Munich city has two football teams (soccer) that share the stadium: the very famous FC Bayern team (in red and white) and the TSV 1860 team (in blue and white) whose mascot is a lion (like Munich). As you may have guessed, the two teams and their fans hate each other. anyway, I did not want to attend a game of the FC Bayern because....I just don't like them. They are arrogant and commercial and they are getting even more on my nerves since the front of the Theatinerkirche (a church) had a huge Nike commercial with Ribery announcing himself new king of Bavaria.

Sooooooo, I always said I would only go to a game of the 1860. Thanks to two of my (female) friends, i can say it is now done. Monday, was my first live football game in Germany and it was nice. It was also freaking cold, but the Germans have it all figure it out: you don’t just wear as many layers as an onion, you also need to drink some Glühwein. It makes the world warmer and happier and all that for 3.30 euros a cup.

The game was fun. The first thing is that anytime a player from 1860 entered, they announced his first name on the micro and the public had to scream his family name. Thank god it was all written on the giant screen… Then we sang some fans songs (also written on the gigantic screen). Finally the game started: we yelled against the green little men (Mönchen Gladbach) , sang and applauded for the blue, we yelled against the sold red and black referee that was being so unfair… Casual football.

I do like football live. It is always different and funnier than watching it on TV, you can check out the cute players (e.g. Görkan or Hoffmann), scream some “Go! Go! Go!” with all you can, it is fun. But it is not Care Bears planet either. You definitely need to be mean and in this case your enemies are:

1. FC Bayern

2. the other team (to which you say that they are exactly so sh**ty as the FC Bayern)

3. The referee

4. “Your” own players in the case where they are not following the orders that you have been screaming from the fans stand since half an hour.

In all cases, you will probably make some reference to some parts of the body, you generally do not refer to. It is part of the thing, it is also part of the fun.

Unfortunately “our” team did a 0-0 which I was very disappointed about. I was even more disappointed that technically they did score, but the (for sure bribed) referee decided for a “abseits” (offside). Stupid rule.

It was a lot of thinking for me to watch the game because even though I do know some basics football rules, I still had to figure the right vocabulary in German and try to figure what is the French word for it. Next I had to try to remember what it means. Then only I could analyse what happened and decide that it was unfair for the referee to use his whistle on one of “our” guys.

The evening was great and it was even greater that I went there with people from Bavaria, real 1860 fans, that could explain to me all the happenings, songs, stakes, rules…and let me annoy them the whole time.

I actually wanted to check if there are any differences between a German game and a French one even if, it is not like I am a French soccer expert but anyway. They are not actually that much. The only things that were weird to me were that the songs music was different (I expected same tune, different lyrics) and that there were no ola (at the last game I attended in Paris we did one every 20 minutes).

Other than that, and among the funny things, one of the guys had his nose broken so he played the whole time with this black mask on the face. Mean me thought it was really funny.

Now if you will excuse me, i need to check on youtube that this Abseits was really an Abseits.