I watch a lot of soccer, but mostly on television these days. The last time I took in a match from start to finish was at Kidsports a few years back when my daughters played for Glacier High.
We had a great time at Kidsports over the years. There were epic victories, such as winning a Three Blind Refs title and finally beating Flathead in a match that mattered, and also some heartbreaking defeats: see that same Flathead side.
And there were days where we just sat back and took in the wonder of the place: the view into the heart of Glacier National Park for instance, or the flocks of sandhill cranes, which use adjoining fields as rest stops on their migrations, or the noisy pheasants that like to announce their presence, especially in the spring.
I’ve kind of been in a funk about soccer since then, at least watching it live. That can happen when your all-time favorite players retire, as mine did after that final match at Kidsports.
So, to get my football mojo back, I went to Germany.
Actually, I went to Germany to see one of my retired soccer heroes, as she is spending the year studying abroad at the University of Heidelberg. But it just so happened that the same week I visited, the two titans of German football — Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich — were to meet in a match that meant everything in the race for the Bundesliga title.
We had to go.
Munich has spent much of the season comfortably atop the Bundesliga standings, but a recent home defeat had shaken the team’s grasp on the title. A Dortmund victory would have moved the side within two points of the league leaders.
There’s not a lot to recommend about Dortmund, other than the atmosphere at Signal Iduna Park. Dortmund sits in the heart of Germany’s Ruhr industrial region. The city is gritty, with the rough edge common in places where things get made, or at least used to, such as America’s Rust Belt. With Dortmund’s fans clad in the team colors of yellow and black it’s an easy comparison to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
We watched from the South Terrace, the most revered section of what is one of the most revered stadiums in all of sport. The South Terrace is standing room only, holding 25,000 fans. Standing terraces were once common across football stadiums in Europe until the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 when 96 fans were crushed to death at the start of a League Cup clash between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
You don’t really stand on the South Terrace so much as you’re held up by the fans around you. I never felt unsafe or claustrophobic, but if you have a problem being in close physical contact with a crowd of strangers for 90 minutes you’re in the wrong place. I can also tell you that when your accent betrays you and the crowd figures out you’re American — almost everyone in Germany speaks English but with a clear German accent — you’ll be embraced like a hero.
Unfortunately the match ended in a 0-0 draw. The result revived Munich’s flagging title quest, and sent Dortmund fans home with the bad taste of a tie that felt more like a loss.
That night as we walked back to our flat we heard cranes calling in the gloom above. We never saw the birds, but their calls faded in and out, suggesting they were circling over the city. I took the avian chorus as a sign it truly was time to return to the pitch.
There’s plenty more to see: the Kop end in Liverpool, Celtic Park in Glasgow, and Camp Nou in Barcelona, where nearly 100,000 fans watch the best team in the world destroy all comers.
Only now I get to stand along side my football heroes as we take it all in together.
Rob Breeding writes and teaches when he’s not fishing or hunting.