The Kimchi Chronicles: Ground #157: Stadion An der Alten Försterei, 1.FC Union Berlin

26/05/2015

1.FC Union Berlin 2-2 FC Ingolstadt 04

Jopek 75', 79' | Matip 5', Levels 82'

Attendance: 17,761 (approx 200 away)

Admission: €14

As previously mentioned, the final game of my three match haul would arrive in the format of more second division football at the highly revered Stadion An der Alten Forsterei, home of the capital's second biggest club, the colloquially known 'Eisern Union' (Iron Union).

FC Union are well-known across European football for their very community and fan driven aspect towards the building of their club, even more so by the socialist ideals that define German football. Indeed, their iconic stadium itself is renowned for the renovation scheme undertook by fans in the summer of 2009, who literally themselves rebuilt the crumbling stadium amid the threat of closure. Roughly 2,500 supporters put in an astonishing 140,000 man hours between them to enable the grounds continuance and evolvement into the wonderful venue it is today.

Prior to the refurbishment, the ground didn't possess any cover save for it's small seated stand. Uniquely for a club of their size, it has maintained three sides of terracing; around 17,000 of the ground's 21.8k capacity is owed to standing spaces. The rebuilt main seated stand is now as swish and stylish as they come, also housing the club's offices.

I made my way to Kopenick, the south-eastern district of Berlin that the ground is situated in, after a very stressful and anger induced hour spent venting expletives to nobody but myself after managing to become hopelessly lost and totally inept at being able to navigate the location of my hostel. A similar scenario happens on virtually every European outing I embark on. I print instructions, I print several maps, nothing can possibly go wrong. Only it can, I fail to get my bearings correct, I become confused, I get stressed, I start ranting and raving and become very restless. I thereafter calm down, realise that I've been a total twat and am at fault for my own predicament, have a laugh at my own expense and get on with my life.

I gave up bothering to find my hotel and thus drop my belongings off before setting off to the stadium. The ground, if you're going via public transport, is best reached on an S-Bahn line. The key info is that from most areas of Berlin you require changing at Ostkruez, whereafter the S3 line is only ten minutes away from Kopenick. The walk from the ground there takes around 10-15 minutes.

As you may have guessed the ground is rather idiosyncratic with its location, it being clearly indicated in the stadium name, which hardly requires an 'A' grade at GSCE in the language to garner the linguistic connection. Don't however expect this to be a picturesque, romanized leafy area, however! The pathway is littered with disposed beer glasses (which tbf, duly get picked up for recycling) and the scraggly bushes are inevitably lined up with beer bellied blokes unloading their bladder upon mother nature.

The ground itself, partly due to its restrictive location, is an absolute logistical nightmare. I have never had such a militant, security-stricken entrance into a German football ground. The gates are operated by humans, rather than machinery, which somewhat lengthens the queueing process; just a small gate opened for a stand which holds several thousand people in it. Despite arriving at the gates around 50 minutes prior to kick-off, it probably took the best part of 25 minutes actually getting into the ground. There are streams of security guards who fully and quizzically search your pockets and belongings. Still with my backpack, I was forced to dispose of my aftershave by the jobsworth determining my fate. For fuck sake, common sense should reign supreme in situations like this. I am a lonesome, oddball traveller, more likely to throw a cuddle than a punch at a football game. What the fuck would my motivation be for launching an aftershave bottle at someone?

The charade arriving into the ground dampened my perception of uber fan friendliness to some extent, and I was equally unimpressed by the total of one small mobile of toilets to cater for several thousand fans. For a huge sufferer of stage fright when it comes down to *Dennis Wise needing to perform, I don't enjoy waiting around for too long.

*I call it that because it's small, ugly, hasn't been seen in years and rarely ever ventured into the opposition's box to begin with.

But on a positive note, the stadium itself is as quaint, compact and awesome as it is regarded. I was also super pleased that they have those rentable, personalised club beers glasses, which I am now accumulating a collection of. And you needn't venture back off the stand for a refill either; the presence and service of the beer backpack sellers were as regular and well-equipped as I've came across. As an unashamed borderline alcoholic, I realise both the positive and dangerous implications of such a service.

Also supreme was my half-time trip to the bottom of the stand for some scran. Union offer up the delights of a paprika-spiced rump of steak, service exquisitely inside a bread roll. Highly recommended, though any carnivore around with a sense of smell won't require my commandment to purchase one.

One thing I did feel a little let down on was the atmosphere. Don't get me wrong; it's good, especially compared the mundane, meekly observed stuff generally conjured up the placid crowd in my home country. It didn't feel particularly special, or even notable, by German standards. I understand a few mitigating factors possible towards this

The opponents, FC Ingolstadt, are not a pulse raiser. They roughly took around 200 fans to the capital, in spite of going into this game in hand with a five point cushion on trailing Kaiserslautern. For all talk of how the German game is run by the people with the fans best interests a heart, there seems to be a high current emergence and trend in bankrolled clubs flourishing at all levels of the pyramid. Audi owned Bavarians Ingolstadt are pissing the division and look set for their first season in the top flight. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for small clubs overachieving and bloodying the noses of the bigger boys (see Paderborn's surprise elevation to the Bundesliga last year and subsequent strong fist of staying there), however, when it comes at undeserving towns with very little football heritage it is disheartening. I was later informed by an Aldershot lad I met up with that it is very much an ice hockey town. To be fair to the lot that did turn up, they did muster up a nice pre-match choreography, and appeared to sing through the match, but the majority of the end was empty and you couldn't hear anything.
The game was a dead rubber for Union fans. That said, mid-table obscurity for the club seems to be the norm year on year for them.
Sunday 1.30pm kick-off's can't be many people's cups of tea, but then again, it's a regular scheduled k/o time for that division.
I was situated in a crap part of the terrace which I regret buying tickets for. I was by the corner flag, in a more family friendly part of the terrace. You should always try and be more amongst it if you can.

A lot of people are induced by their cool, slow-building, rock genre entrance theme. It's very unique, well worth checking up on youtube. Not my personal favourite, I prefer the far cheesier and catchy pop efforts by Duisburg and Monchengladbach, but I can see why a lot of people are so fond of it!

I also loved one of their simple but effective chants. The kurve behind the goal shout "Eisern" towards the side terrace who in turn shout back "Union", which, by the way, rather amusingly sounds like a German pronunciation of 'Onion', which had my wryly smiling to my immature self for the duration. Anyway, the shouts start to quicken and become louder and louder, to the point where they are starting to sound downright aggressive and want to swing a few right hooks at each other. At the end as they become weary, they clap themselves in a self-congratulatory manner!

For the first time in several outings I was actually treated to a thoroughly entertaining game of football, which was a nice bonus.

Eisern certainly didn't look like the side with zilch to kick a ball in anger for and actually for the best part of it looked like the superior side. Is it possible to describe a goal as "against the run of play" when it has hit the back of the onion (or union) bag within four minutes of the game occurring? No? Oh, well OK. But either way it came out of nowhere. Ingolstadt received a free kick just within the Union half and as the players prepared to defend a lofted cross, the visiting centre back smartly remained on the left hand side of the box, completely unguarded after his marker went awol, oblivious to the flawlessly constructed training ground routine about to occur. The set-piece was perfectly lofted into his path, he took the ball into his stride with control not befitting of your standard centre half, and duly poked the ball through the Union Berlin goalkeeper's legs. 1-0.

Union regained composure however and looked the stronger of the two sides; enjoying the vast majority of possession and carving out several half-chances. Shortly after the break, forward Seb Polter was set through on goal but wrongly had the flag raised up against him. He duly missed with his lobbed on-one-one effort anyhow.

The middle period of the second half seemed to be petering out without any signs of serious goal threat. Eisern forced up several corners but were not once able to put in a delivery of any quality, which in my opinion is one of biggest travesties from paid professional footballers.

Then suddenly, completely out of nowhere, a divine piece of magic unearthed from central Scandanavian midfielder Bjorn Jopek set the stadium alight. A neat build up on the edge of the area, a reverse ball played neatly into his bath, he took a stride towards the edge of the area and unleashed a beautiful left footed rocket that had the opposing goalkeeper flat on his arse after grasping thin air. It wasn't even hit aside of the keeper's positioning, but the ball was hit so hard, so true, without even dipping, just evading underneath the crossbar. Slightly off of his line, there was nothing his acrobatic efforts could do to prevent what was quite simply one of the finest strikes I've seen in live action for sometime. 'Thunderbolt' style efforts don't tend to be my favoured style of wondergoals, but there was something so superb about the technique of this strike that set it apart from the rest of it's type. Sublime.

His next strike that completed the turnaround a minute later weren't too shabby either. Lining up a free-kick from twenty odd yards again, he stepped up and curled a low dipping shot that went just adrift of the wall and crept in via the woodwork. A well deserved and just quickfire turnaround against an increasingly cynical Ingolstadt side left me smiling.

The joy was to be short-lived however, the guests ensuring that they'd be back on level terms again a few minutes later to conclude a crazy 7 minute goal glut. Another set piece, this time off the bonce of another defender; Tobian Levels. His glancing header had a strong enough connection to glide past Amsif thus rolling along the post, and was adjudged to have already crossed the line after being bundled in for good measure by his supporting cast.

And that's how the scoreline remained. A thoroughly entertaining game, cheers lads. Good to be amongst a home end roar and celebration after a recent streak of being a bad omen to German home clubs!

One of the most startling observations I made out of my visit of Union Berlin more than anything was the presence of several openly gay couples, of both male and female variety. I saw several of whom were holding hands and displaying affection. I'm not sure if this is attributed to Berlin's general reputation as a liberal, open-minded city or whether it's more of a reflection of FC Union and their tolerable attitude.

I can't say with all due certainly that they are openly accepted with clear joy by all sections of their support but without wanting to sound like a patronizing, condescending cretin yet again (but failing) but it was warming to see that they could feel safe to feel comfortable in such a macho-male and ultimately, and quite sadly, a typically homophobic environment that generally surrounds the majority of football stadiums. I'd honestly quite dread the reaction that two guys holding hands would provoke amongst some of our support. I think I only know of a singular openly gay bloke who supports Dover, and while some would say that it's gentle harmless 'ribbing', I have previously felt uncomfortable with a few of the comments that I have heard towards him.

Anyhow, me commenting on such matters is somewhat hypocritical in the first place. After all, I'm as much as a casual homophobic in a football ground as much as anyone. How often have I joined in or even initiated a chant covering a lyric that implies that all Dartford fans are homosexuals (as if that is supposed to be an insult)? How many times in the heat of a game have I shouted "get off the floor you fucking poof", or words to such effect? While genuine homophobia and denial of equal rights and legislation for gay sections of society angers me, it's still ingrained into UK football culture and it's difficult to ever foresee a tolerant and welcoming crowd on homosexual players and supporters.

Through the forest! Very few bars and pubs en route, though there are a few. Pub culture really isn't as such in Germany anyway, but there are plenty of cheap beer stalls.