FC Zurich 2-1 St. Gallen, Wednesday 14th August 2019

FC Zurich 2-1 St. Gallen, Swiss Super League, att. 9,112 (Stadion Letzigrund)

Welcome to ....

What a place Zurich is.  Walking from the railway station, down bahnstrasse, towards the lake, it just reeked of money.  No wonder they hold Diamond athletics meetings here.  I’d come again, if only I could afford it.  As it is, I’d timed it so’s I could hit Zurich early afternoon, have a nose around, go see a match (KO 7pm) and be on an overnite train to Vienna at 21:40.  Everything went swimmingly.

Pre-match entertainment on Lake Zurich

After the peruse (I didn’t buy nuffink) I walked up to the stadium, which is maybe 20-30 minutes the other side of the railway station.  Just follow the train tracks (ish).  Alternatively, get a train one stop to Zurich Hardbrucke, but it’s still a fair walk.  Tram 2 from the centre of town also went there, but nothing beats a walk in the Swiss alps.  (Zurich is very tenuously in the Swiss Alps.)

Maybe you'll see the preferred carrier of Swiss police.

I arrived to find a decent-sized queue.  But this was not why I missed kick-off: the lady in the ticket office pointed me in the right direction for the entrance, but I missed it and ended up doing a lap of the stadium.  How was I to know ‘D’ was next to ‘A’?  I saw ‘A’…marched on…and the next I saw was ‘C’.  Thinking I was nearly at ‘D’ I carried on, only to find ‘B’, by which time I figured I was halfway around the stadium and might as well continue.  What I didn’t realise was there were carparks and football pitches ahead, meaning an even longer walk.  Oh well, no harm done and great view of the stadium.  The Letzigrund is a beautiful (athletics) stadium.  Outside, the surround has oxidised, giving it a classy finish in keeping with the area.

The ticket queue.

I missed the first 10 minutes, though I had managed to secure a beer.  Both sides had connived to be scoreless when I waltzed in.  Although I was meant to be in row 8, I ventured further up the stand, affording a better view from the ‘sud kurve’.  Further around this curve were Zurich’s ultras and, fair play, around 2,000 of them never sat down the whole game and made noise throughout.  In fact, in a crowd of just over 9,000, I’d say more than half were at this end, perhaps reflecting the cheaper price.

The sud kurve.

Behind the other goal were the away fans.  Who were Zurich playing?  I had no idea.  I didn’t recognise the badge on the screen or the colours either.  ‘SG’?  Whothehell are ‘SG’?  St. Gallen.  Of course.  And for them, coming from the far east (of Switzerland) it was as close to a derby as they get, about 50 miles away.  I was impressed with their fans’ pre-match orchestration.  They’d squeezed their lot together and flanked each side with green and white ribbon.  Now, if only their flares were green rather than red.  I don’t think they’d thought that one through.

St. Gallen fans

Zurich went one up before the break, a sweet volley in off the bar from about 10 yards.  Now Zurich’s flares were out (in their blue).  Gone was the whistling at St. Gallen’s flares, while there was no stadium announcement regards Zurich’s pyrotechnics, as there was for the visitors.  Funny that.

But while Zurich partied, St. Gallen had a free kick, 25 yards out, a little wide of the goal.  Still probably too far out to score but I wasn’t banking on the poor position of the goalkeeper who had little chance of making the save, even though he got a hand to it.  One of those ‘this is in’ before it even hits the net.

Green power!

Half-time, I grabbed another beer and a ‘Letziburger’ (see what they did there?)  Problies average, but I liked that you could help yourself to tomatoes, onion, gherkins and coleslaw.  The beer, however, had shrunk in size – shoulda got it from the other stand, as I did earlier.

Second half, I moved a little more towards the corner, front row above a gangway.  Still well populated, though a bit more laidback, if the bloke smoking a joint two seats along was anything to go by.  The match progressed in its earlier vein; misplaced pass after misplaced pass.  It looked like a lower division English game, which it probably would be.  A St. Gallen midfielder was given his marching orders for a second yellow, a foul preventing the break.  Easy life for Zurich, you’d think.

The ref gets his red card out (for the player in black on the left).

St. Gallen sacrifice a forward, throw on the sub…and a minute later Zurich have a man sent off for virtually the same offence.  10 v 10, now we’d see a battle.  Zurich threw on the proverbial ‘big man up front’ and won it when a convoluted one-two ended up sidefooted in from 10 yards.  Thereafter, the visitors threw everything at Zurich and could have scored 3 or 4, but for great goalkeeping, poor finishing and bad luck (one shot deflected narrowly wide with the keeper stranded).  The spoils were Zurich’s.

And that was it.  The end of another summer groundhop/interrail trip.  I jumped on a tram and was back at the station half an hour before my train, en route to meet the other half in Krakow.  I love it when a plan comes together!

Zurich fans celebrate the winner.

The Damage:
CHF 25 ent
CHF 7 beer (Carlsberg, 500ml)
CHF 6 beer (Carlsberg, 400ml)
CHF 8.5 ‘Letziburger’
= CHF 46.50 (£40)

The Tunes:
Hi Scores (Boards of Canada)
Geogaddi (Boards of Canada)
BBC Sessions (Cocteau Twins)

Stayed at:
overnight train to Vienna

Letzigrund panorama

This year’s groundhop in full:
Fri 26^th July: Rot-Weiss Essen
27 Holstein Kiel

28 Anderlecht and KAS Eupen

29 Kickers Offenbach

30 Kaiserslautern

31 Chemnitzer

Thurs 1^st August: Jablonec

2 Zaglebie Lubin

3 failed: Bohemians

4 FSV Zwickau

5 Waldof Mannheim

6 day off!

7 Slovan Bratislava

8 FK Austria Wien

9 Zbrojovka Brno

10 Pribram

11 Viktoria Zizkov

12 Karlsruher SC

13 FC Giessen

14 FC Zurich

Countries 7:  (Germany, Belgium, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Switzerland)
Matches: 19

Welcome to ...(II)

Beautiful.

The visitors letting off flares.

The visitors' end.

The view of the pitch.

The home straight.

The Zurich ultras.

Flares after the 1st goal.

Everything in proportion.

The exec side.

Zurich tower blocks.

The sun setting over Letzigrund.

The back of the stand.

Full-time.  No more football on holiday.

FC Giessen 0-1 TSV Steinbach, Tuesday 13th August 2019

FC Giessen 0-1 TSV Steinbach, Regionalliga Sudwest, att. 3,349 (Waldstadion Giessen)

Welcome to the .....

Being based in Frankfurt and planning what game to go to tonite, I saw there were 4 games in the regionalliga sudwest and plumped for the one with the biggest stadium: the 10,000 capacity Waldstadion of FC Giessen, and what a good decision it was, even if I’d never heard of them before.

Giessen is a decent sized German town (c. 80,000) and is ‘famed’ (Wikipedia tells me) for its Mathematics museum.  No, I didn’t go.  I did the maths and figured if I arrived late enough I’d have an excuse…

Seems Hamlyn Giessen has a rat problem.

The stadium was a good walk away, a mile through the streets, then another mile up a hill.  Don’t bother looking for floodlights – they don’t have any.  I presume this scuttles any chances of promotion to the national 3.liga?

I expected a crowd of a few hundred.  There were 3,000 and odd there, in a local(ish) derby with TSV Steinbach, who'd brought at least 300 themselves.  The capacity of 10,000 must be some way out though: the curves at either end have been dismantled, leaving an empty space at one end and a VIP tent and various stalls at the other.  Down one side of the pitch lay terrace, while opposite, the Main Stand was flanked by terracing either side, the terraces on both sides of the pitch going way past the byeline.

The view upon entry.

I entered at the car park end of the ground.  Looks like that crawl of traffic up the hill WAS for the football after all.  I took a quick photo from a decent distance away; the stewards insisted on seeing the photo, obviously worried I’d be identifying them in some way.  Paranoia.  What was I going to use it for?  And how many times a day are their photos taken by CCTV?

The entrance.  Watch our for stewards.

Upon entry, I was asked which team I was supporting, home or away.  I said ‘home’ and was pointed left, towards the large terrace.  The near side terrace on the right was reserved for the visitors.  The home terrace was busy and it was difficult to see a spot.  However, I needed food, water (beer) and most of all….a pee.  I never did find a toilet, so ended up doing what most Germans do, finding a bush on the stadium perimeter.

The main home terrace.

For the first half, I stood on the home terrace flanking the Main Stand; it was a decent enough view and certainly ideal for the only goal of the game.  A corner, taken right in front of me, was curled in to the near post.  It was  a bit low, so the Steinbach player dummied it for his team mate to head home  on the half volley.  A well-taken goal, but not the sort you see higher up the footballing pyramid.

The view from the corner.

TSV, who could have gone top if other results favoured them (they didn’t) always looked the better side and should probably have won by more.  The players and fans looked more than happy though, with choreographed bouncing and chanting at full-time.  The Giessen ‘ultras’?  One man and his drum, with half a dozen mates.  No matter how hard they tried, no-one else joined in.  It’s summertime.  Far nicer to wallow on the terrace than get all het-up over some footie match.

One man and his drum.

The Damage:

€10 ent
€3 beer (x2, Licher, 300ml)
€3.50 bratwurst
€5 badge
free prog

= €24.50 (£22)

The Tunes:
Watermark (Enya)
Shepherd Moons (Enya)
Mixmag Apr09 (Aeroplane)
Bummed (Happy Mondays)
Pills ‘n’ Thrills ‘n’ Bellyaches (Happy Mondays)
Turns Into Stone (Stone Roses)

Stayed at:
Frankfurt Hostel (£18)

Panorama towards the Main Stand.

Panorama from the Main Stand side.

Behind the goal.

A busy home terrace.

It's laid back on this side...

The clubhouse, incorporating the changing rooms.

The view towards the far goal.

Beer tents behind the terrace.

The clubhouse scoreboard does its job.

Half-time...players going through the terrace.

Action in front of the TSV fans.

The Press Box.

My perch for the 1st half.

The Main Stand.

Action in front of the TSV faithful.

The old curve.

...and the other one.

A Giessen player contemplates defeat.

A player returns to the changing rooms/clubhouse.

Yum!