I’m always suprised at the quality of lower league German stadiums
I guess so but when you compare 2nd tiers from Spain and Germany their quality is so much better. Germany’s 3rd tier also has great stadiums too, the only one that I can think of being great in our 3rd tier is Riazor and that’s also because they used to be a great team.
I mean the Championship also has big teams, Leicester and probably the biggest one is Leeds are there. Sheffield Wednesday is also a traditional club.
German sports culture always seemed so family oriented to me. Its like even small neighbourhood clubs are the gathering center, let it be sports or even bingo nights for elders. Everyone has an attachment to the clubs.
Well its the club culture. To keep ur hometown club Alive u have to participate and work a bit for it. Its strenghening the community and binding ppl to the club
Extremely jealous of this.
What makes me sad about England is when I first started working, our factory had a sports and social club that had existed for 100+ years.
This used to be the norm, and many bigger clubs still around today (West Ham: Thames Ironworks) came from these roots. Even once they’d professionalize the Saturday 3pm kick-off time was aligned to the time factories closed so the workers could then go and watch.
Anyway long-story short, the factory got bought by a Chinese firm and they instantly shut-down all of the social and sports clubs. Despite the wages always being relatively low, people used to love working there for the social element which completely disappeared.
It’s admiral how Germans have held on to their institutions compared to how we will just sell off anything to the highest bidder. I think it’s a class issue where the working class here either just don’t own enough to have a say, or worse don’t feel they have a right to have a say in community clubs that have been there for over 100 years.
Spain’s 2nd division has some insane stadiums as well, i bet most of the teams in spanish 2nd division are bigger than most stadiums in Portugal 1st division outside of the big 3, and i would bet 100€ the average attendance is bigger than in Portugal outside the big 3
“Portugal outside of Big 3” is really pretty small business lol. The 2nd tier of the Polish leauge also has more attendance than that, and Poland is among the European countries with fewest people going to football games per capita.
The “Big 3” is more than 60% of attendance of whole Primeira Liga.
Poland is among the European countries with fewest people going to football games per capita.
Is that lack of interest in football, or just the domestic league? Most of the Polish I’ve worked with would play in our 6-a-side games. One lad with a Legia Warsaw screensaver who was a bit of a nutter.
Hertha, Schalke, HSV, Nürnberg, Kaiserslautern and Hannover - six of twelve '06 World Cup stadiums are used by clubs currently in the 2. Bundesliga. Add Düsseldorf and that’s seven stadiums with 49.000+ seats, while the Championship, Serie B and Segunda Division have just one 40.000+ seater each (two in Ligue 2).
2006 is also a big part why some of those stadiums are now not in the Bundesliga anymore. A lot of Clubs taking on huge debt to pay for upgrades that couldn’t really afford it.
