2. Bundesliga 2021/22

[Michael]

I am in, you know I love following both Bundesliga's in Germany. This should be interesting to play and to create a decent team. 

[Tommy]

Of course I'm in. 

[Coma]

I need a club to follow in 2. Liga as I feel like this will be the thread for some prime smack talk.  Thinking about Hannover or Nürnberg.

[Coma]

From Wikipedia... not sure if this is true or not 

In 1921, the Germany national team consisted only of players from Nürnberg and Fürth for a match against the Netherlands in Amsterdam. The players traveled in the same train, but with the Nürnberg players in a carriage at the front of the train and those from Fürth in a carriage at the rear, while team manager Georg B. Blaschke sat in the middle. A Fürth player scored the first goal of the match but was only congratulated by Fürth players. Allegedly, Hans Sutor, a former Fürth player, was forced to leave the team when he married a woman from Nuremberg.

[Eco]

5 minutes ago, Coma said:

I need a club to follow in 2. Liga as I feel like this will be the thread for some prime smack talk.  Thinking about Hannover or Nürnberg.

There is already a Hannover fan (or was he Hansa Rostock?). 

Go with the latter mate. 

[Ploughendplonker]

As I've decided to adopt Hannover 96 as my continental team, I'm definitely in. 

[Coma]

On 17/07/2021 at 09:59, Ploughendplonker said:

As I've decided to adopt Hannover 96 as my continental team, I'm definitely in. 

I've been watching their pre-season matches on YouTube.  I have high hopes for them as they seem to have the players to mount a challenge for promotion.  

[Ploughendplonker]

4 minutes ago, Coma said:

I've been watching their pre-season matches on YouTube.  I have high hopes for them as they seem to have the players to mount a challenge for promotion.  

Didn't realise their friendlies are on Youtube, would've had a watch otherwise. 

I noticed a lot of Bundesliga 2 games were live on Ladbrokes last season, wonder whether that's continuing or was just for when there were no crowds in. 

[Coma]

9 minutes ago, Ploughendplonker said:

Didn't realise their friendlies are on Youtube, would've had a watch otherwise. 

I noticed a lot of Bundesliga 2 games were live on Ladbrokes last season, wonder whether that's continuing or was just for when there were no crowds in. 

I've subscribed to their YouTube channel.  I typically don't watch them live but I do go back and watch the re-airing.  There are at least 3 matches on there iirc... vs. Bielefeld, Magdeburg, and Hertha are the ones I recall.  All in German though.

[SchalkeUK]

So far there are a few details for TV re BL2  the first game on Fri 23 July is 04 v Hamburg and is free to air on Sat1 as well as Sky BL1 and BT in the UK

The following day Sky PL 2 3 4 5 has Hansa, Dresden,  Heidenheim and Darmstadt all at 12.30 Weder v Hannover on SkyBL1 and free to Air on Sport 1 at 1930

The rest for weekend ar all 1230 on Sunday Sky BL2 3 4 inorder of

St Pauli,  Nurembeg and Sandhausen against Tommy's gang.

The rest of the present fixtures are so far covered only by SkyDE other than Werder away to Tommy's lot on 31 July at 1930  Free to air on Sport 1.  If any other channels become posted I will put them on here if you wish.

Updated 04 and Hamburg added to Digi 4 Romania Sport 1 Israel and Supersport Albania2

Heidenheim also Romania

1860 free to air on BR

Kaiserslautern  BL3 free on SR and SWR 

If you can get Magenta sport then they have most of the BL2 games and some BL3  this weekend

 

[londonerlilie]

So, we have three cases of confirmed COVID cases in our squad... Not a great start to the season

[Coma]

Test post.

Is there a size limit to posts?  Just tried to copy/paste a nice write-up about the season starting and it won't let me.  It's all text, no images.

[Stan]

2 minutes ago, Coma said:

Test post.

Is there a size limit to posts?  Just tried to copy/paste a nice write-up about the season starting and it won't let me.  It's all text, no images.

any emojis or formatting? Or if you've quoted someone it might not work.

[Coma]

Just now, Stan said:

any emojis or formatting? Or if you've quoted someone it might not work.

Maybe text formatting.  I'll fiddle with it a bit.

[Coma]

Twenty-five days after the national team limped to a 2-0 defeat against England in Joachim Low’s last game in charge, German football is back with a bang.

Tonight (Friday), Schalke take on Hamburg, and the winners of that veritable clash of giants will immediately be seen as early favourites to win a championship race that’s more open and eagerly anticipated than ever before.

Werder Bremen, Hannover, Fortuna Dusseldorf, Nurenberg, Darmstadt and plucky Heidenheim should all feature heavily in the hunt for the top three spots, if not the title itself.

There’s just no way of telling how this one will play out, apart from the fact that Julian Nagelsmann won’t win a single league game against any of the sides mentioned above: his Bayern Munich are one of the few blue-chip teams not involved in Bundesliga 2 this season.

This is the Bundesliga Universe, featuring a familiar set of star protagonists transported into the strangest of environments.

Another full-scale nexus event was narrowly avoided on May 29 as much-storied Bundesliga side Cologne won the relegation play-off against Holstein Kiel to avoid the fate of the second division’s most prominent new additions, Schalke and Werder.

But the “Billy Goats” staying up couldn’t stop the timeline from splintering.

The 2021-22 German season will be weirdly upside-down, with previous European Cup winners (Hamburg), and our last UEFA and Cup Winners’ Cup winners (Schalke and Werder respectively) competing in the second division, while minnows such as Arminia Bielefeld, Greuther Furth and Bochum play in the increasingly de-glamourised top flight. Newly-promoted Dynamo Dresden and Hansa Rostock, the two biggest clubs in eastern Germany, add further interest, as do two of the most ferocious derbies in German football: St Pauli vs Hamburg and Hamburg against Werder.

On the whole, this season’s 18 second division clubs have won 43 German championships (Bundesliga and DDR Oberliga) while the 17 Bundesliga clubs not called Bayern Munich have only won a combined 27. The quality of football played will be better at the top but in terms of general appeal and interest, we’ll see a marked shift towards the “Lower House”, as the second division is colloquially known.

“Bremen, Schalke, Dresden and Rostock are all incredibly well-supported clubs,” Hamburg’s director of sport Jonas Boldt tells The Athletic. “You can already sense the increased attention on the league, everyone’s talking about it. The games will be much more exciting than ever before and we’ll see higher TV ratings than ever before. Some fixtures will get better ratings than Bundesliga matches.”

TV rights holders in the second division have long marketed each new season as “the best Bundesliga 2 ever” but for once, reality will match the hype. Boldt is right to point out that the TV audience for Friday’s game and similar fixtures featuring some of the country’s best-supported clubs will blow those for Augsburg vs Freiburg or Greuther Furth vs Bochum in the top division out of the water.

Exact figures are closely guarded but the worst-performing live TV matches from the Bundesliga regularly draw in the range of 4,000-5,000 viewers. In Germany, every single match in the top two divisions is available to watch live, which further dilutes viewership.

“We will get much more attention as a second division than usual,” Fortuna Dusseldorf chief executive Klaus Allofs said to Funke Media Group. “There we will be many good stories. Schalke fans now care about division two — that will have an upscaling effect.”

Bundesliga 2 clubs can do with any extra euros that interest generates, especially after a year of empty stands thanks to the pandemic. TV rights are only worth about a quarter of those generated by their top-flight peers. Schalke, for example, are set to take home about €23 million (£20 million) as the second division’s best-paid club while Bayern will make about €90 million (£77 million) in the top flight. The same ratio is evident at the bottom of both ladders: Bundesliga 2 new boys Hansa Rostock are projected to take home €7.2 million (£6.2 million) whereas Greuther Furth should make just over €28 million (£24 million) in the Bundesliga.

The flip side to Bundesliga 2’s unprecedented upgrade is a further depreciation of the Bundesliga brand. The season preview cover of the 11 Freunde football magazine is a mock-up of a popular travel guide that included a sarcastic reference to “the Bundesliga’s most beautiful big cities”: Bochum, Furth and Sinsheim, where Hoffenheim’s stadium is. The not-too-subtle subtext is that Germany’s top flight has never been more provincial: seven of the country’s largest cities are not represented at all at elite level.

The rise of the minnows reflects both the traditional clubs’ difficulties adapting to the modern age and the smaller clubs’ more agile, smarter decisions. But the enduring (and endearing) competence of clubs such as Freiburg and Augsburg doesn’t make up for the lack of spectacle and emotional involvement that the behemoths generate. Half of the nation’s best clubs have never won a trophy at the top level. The Bundesliga has become a league of also-rans, stuffed with too many clubs very few people care about.

Down-at-heel Bundesliga 2, by contrast, will deliver exactly the kind of widely-felt drama that the masses are craving after the joyless “ghost” campaign of 2020-21. There will be big winners and even bigger losers here; millions of thwarted expectations, millions of dreams fulfilled.

In other words: it’ll be lots of fun.

- Article by Rapha Hoenigstein

[Coma]

Ah, it was the "rich text".

[Coma]

Why Bundesliga 2 is European football's real 'Super League'

The 2021-22 season gets underway in Germany's second division on Friday as Schalke host Hamburg, just two huge names in a league full of fallen giants, cult clubs and fanatical support. Welcome to the "Super League."

    

St. Pauli are all about doing football differently

When 12 European clubs launched their ill-fated attempt to form an elite European Super League earlier this year, they did so under the slogan: "The best clubs. The best players. Every week."

Now, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but, given that the venture collapsed in a storm of almost universal condemnation within 48 hours, it's safe to assume that not everybody thought it was the best idea in the world.

The failed coup demonstrated once and for all just how far detached the men who run football are from the people who regularly watch football: not always the best clubs, rarely the best players — but absolutely every week.

Entirely without the involvement of Florentino Perez, Andrea Agnelli, Joel Glazer, John Henry & Co., however, the 2021-22 season will feature a "Super League" after all: Bundesliga 2.

Germany's second division starts on Friday night, and here's why you should be watching:

1. Big, big clubs

In Germany, where the so-called 50+1 rule ensures that members have a say in the running of their clubs, the size of a football club is measured not by footballing success, but by its membership numbers.

And, when Schalke (158,000 members*) host Hamburg (85,360*) in the opening game on Friday night, the fixture will not only see Germany's third and seventh-biggest clubs going head-to-head, but two of the biggest sports clubs on the entire planet, with both clubs making the top 20 (Schalke fifth, HSV 18th).

Indeed, with Werder Bremen, St. Pauli, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Nuremberg, Dynamo Dresden, Hannover 96 and Hansa Rostock also in the division, Bundesliga 2 features nine of Germany's 25 biggest football clubs in terms of membership.

* Figures according to kicker magazine on 19.7.2021, which also puts Borussia Dortmund on 160,000 and Bayern Munich on 293,000.

Many supporters oppose the idea of restructuring Schalke in a bid to increase revenue

2. Fallen Giants

Not that the second division is short on sporting pedigree, either.

This season's Bundesliga 2 clubs have a grand total of 43 league titles among them, whether in the Bundesliga since 1963, the pre-Bundesliga German Championship or the former East German Oberliga.

They also boast a combined 26 domestic cups, whether the prewar Tschammerpokal, the modern DFB Pokal (German Cup) or the former East German FDGB Pokal.

In Hamburg, Schalke and Werder Bremen, the division also has former European champions. HSV won the European Cup in 1983 and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1977, Schalke's famous "Eurofighters" lifted the UEFA Cup in 1997, and Werder Bremen triumphed in the Cup Winners' Cup in 1992.

In addition, Fortuna Düsseldorf reached the European Cup Winners' Cup final in 1979, while Dynamo Dresden reached the UEFA Cup semifinal in 1989.

Felix Magath scored the winning goal when Hamburg won the European Cup in 1983

3. Fanatical support

In 2018-19, the last full season to be played prior to the coronavirus pandemic, this year's second-division clubs recorded a combined average attendance of 24,500.

To put that in perspective, that would make this current Bundesliga 2 the fourth-most-watched league in Europe, behind La Liga (27,100 in 2018-19), the Premier League (38,200) and the Bundesliga (42,738), and ahead of Serie A (25,000) and Ligue 1 (22,800).

Two of the eastern German giants in particular, Dynamo Dresden and Hansa Rostock, pride themselves on their fanatical support.

In October 2019, more than 30,000 Dynamo fans followed their team away to Hertha Berlin in the Cup, and have made headlines in the past when taking over 20,000 fans to away games against 1860 Munich in the Allianz Arena in 2005, 2011 and 2016. In January 2017, more than 10,000 traveled to Nuremberg — just because they could.

As for Hansa Rostock, their fans are looking forward to being back in the second division for the first time in a decade. In March 2018, Hansa set a record away attendance for the third division when 4,400 fans accompanied the team to Bremen for a league game against Werder's reserves.

This season, they'll see their side face Werder's first team, if COVID-19 infection rates allow it.

4. Derby Days

The two games between Hansa and Dynamo themselves will be two of the most hotly anticipated, especially if fans are allowed.

The fixture is one of the biggest derbies in eastern Germany, pitting Rostock, the Hanseatic port on the Baltic Sea coast, against Dresden, the grandly nicknamed "Florence on the Elbe" and capital of the state of Saxony.

They meet in Rostock on Matchday 4 on August 21 and in Dresden in February, while Dynamo fans will also be looking forward to Saxony derbies against local rivals Erzgebirge Aue.

Elsewhere, the season will feature several northern clashes of varying intensity. The standout is the Hamburg derby between HSV and St. Pauli, now going into its fourth consecutive season after HSV's latest failure to secure promotion. HSV will also resume Nordderby hostilities against Werder Bremen, after the latter were relegated.

Holstein Kiel and Hannover complete a strong northern German lineup while, in the west, there's little love lost between Schalke and Fortuna Düsseldorf either.

There are also three Bavarian clubs in the division, but nine-time German champions Nuremberg wouldn't consider Regensburg or Ingolstadt rivals. The "Club" would have been hoping that 1860 Munich had been promoted instead, but the Blues missed out on the final day.

Dynamo Dresden vs. Hansa Rostock — both back in the second division

5. Well-run smaller clubs

The big names and fallen giants may grab the headlines, but they're in the second division for a reason: From Hamburg to Gelsenkirchen to Dresden, some of Germany's greatest clubs have been let down by gross mismanagement.

For other smaller clubs, the second division is a reward for sensible management and sustainable development, allowing them to punch above their weight.

In Hamburg, St. Pauli have fashioned an entire identity around doing football differently. With their explicit anti-racism stance, regular anti-discrimination campaigns and defense of the 50+1 rule, they've attracted fans from all over the world. The football isn't always brilliant, but they've only lost one of the last eight derbies against HSV, and that's probably more important.

Elsewhere, nestled in the Erzgebirge mountains on the German-Czech border, Aue have thrived where many of their more illustrious eastern German rivals have failed. Hailing from a former mining town of just 18,000 inhabitants, Aue have been a regular fixture in the second division since 2003, only suffering two relegations in that time. Their Erzgebirgsstadion, in one of the most picturesque locations in Germany, was renovated in 2018.

Heidenheim's Frank Schmidt is Germany's longest-serving coach. He gave Bayern Munich a scare recently

Further south in Baden-Württemberg, Heidenheim have enjoyed an impressive rise under the steady but expert guidance of head coach Frank Schmidt, Germany's longest-serving coach, having been in the job since 2007.

In 2019, they gave Bayern Munich a scare in the German Cup quarterfinal, only losing 5-4 in the Allianz Arena. In 2020, they reached the promotion playoff, losing on away goals to Werder Bremen. At 555 meters (1,821 feet) above sea level, Heidenheim's Voith-Arena is the highest stadium in professional German football.

6. The 50+1 rule

It's cropped up a couple of times regarding the importance of club membership and the stance of clubs such as St. Pauli, but German football's 50+1 rule is arguably more heavily anchored in Bundesliga 2 than in the top-flight.

Of the 18 clubs, only Ingolstadt really draw frowns from advocates of the 50+1 rule, given the club's links to car manufacturer Audi. Ingolstadt's members do retain 80.1% control of the club, but the other 19.9% belongs to Audi Sport GmbH, itself a subsidiary of Volkswagen. Two former Audi board members, one current employee and a Volkswagen board spokesman form a majority on the club's supervisory board.

Hannover have been at the center of the debate over 50+1 for years. Former club President Martin Kind is a vocal opponent of the rule but was thwarted in his attempt to secure an exemption and take over majority control in 2018.

"50+1 stays!" Hannover fans have been particularly vocal in defense of the 50+1 rule

When Hamburg's professional football division was separated out into a private company in 2014, some supporters broke away in protest and formed their own club, HFC Falke. The promised successes as a result of the separation (or Ausgliederung) have since failed to materialize and HSV remain reliant on major shareholder Klaus-Michael Kühne.

It has been suggested that Schalke, relegated from the Bundesliga last season with €217 million ($257.8 million) of debt but still a 100% member-owned club, may be pursuing similar options.

Nevertheless, the second division doesn't feature any exemptions from the 50+1 rule (such as VfL Wolfsburg, Bayer Leverkusen and TSG Hoffenheim) or organizations that have actively circumvented regulations.

For many German fans, that's another reason to watch Bundesliga 2, Europe's real "Super League."

[SchalkeUK]

I spent many years marking papers for students taking various Exams.  Not sure if that is purely  Coma's work, but - and I do not doubt it - if it is then it would be difficult to mark it down in any way or even try and ignore the arguments.  The fact that it needs to be read more than once so as not to miss any of the points made, says everything about the quality of the post.  The word 'fledgling' is no longer appropriate!

[Eco]

26 minutes ago, SchalkeUK said:

I spent many years marking papers for students taking various Exams.  Not sure if that is purely  Coma's work, but - and I do not doubt it - if it is then it would be difficult to mark it down in any way or even try and ignore the arguments.  The fact that it needs to be read more than once so as not to miss any of the points made, says everything about the quality of the post.  The word 'fledgling' is no longer appropriate!

Maybe he should have tagged them, but it was taken from here - 

https://www.dw.com/en/why-bundesliga-2-is-european-footballs-real-super-league/a-58318380

[nudge+]

Schalke v HSV, two of my all time favourite clubs in a season opener  Will be rooting for neither of them to win here.

[Coma]

2 hours ago, SchalkeUK said:

I spent many years marking papers for students taking various Exams.  Not sure if that is purely  Coma's work, but - and I do not doubt it - if it is then it would be difficult to mark it down in any way or even try and ignore the arguments.  The fact that it needs to be read more than once so as not to miss any of the points made, says everything about the quality of the post.  The word 'fledgling' is no longer appropriate!

Not my work, but agree it was a great article.

[SchalkeUK]

1 hour ago, Eco said:

Maybe he should have tagged them, but it was taken from here - 

https://www.dw.com/en/why-bundesliga-2-is-european-footballs-real-super-league/a-58318380

Ah well - at least Rahim Sterling is not the only cheat around then!

[Coma]

Going to try the Bremen Hannover Sport 1 feed today with vpn. Wish me luck.

[nudge+]

4 minutes ago, Coma said:

Going to try the Bremen Hannover Sport 1 feed today with vpn. Wish me luck.

Good luck. Free or paid VPN?

[Coma]

Express VPN gives you a 7-day free trial, no credit card or anything. Working great.