Vorsprung durch fans at Germany’s St Pauli

Chelsea and Bayern Munich are both superpowers of the modern game. This year’s Champions League final between the two teams, in the Allianz Arena, will be remembered for Didier Drogba’s stunning late goal and the dramatic penalty shoot-out.

While the west London team’s spirit and resilience won them the biggest prize in club football, the match was also a clash between two very different sporting philosophies.

English football clubs are bought and sold like any other commercial business. Roman Abramovich owns 100 per cent of Chelsea and his money has built them into a global brand.

He wouldn’t have been allowed to buy Bayern Munich because German football has a “50+1″rule, which prevents clubs being owned by any one powerful individual. The Champions League finalists are 82 per cent owned by their supporters.

Fan power

Fan ownership means that German supporters have a much stronger voice in the way the game is run than their English counterparts.

As a result, ticket prices are much lower. The cheapest season ticket in the family section at Stamford Bridge is £595. This compares to just 120 euros (around £95) at Bayern Munich.

The Bundesliga has the biggest crowds in Europe, with an average gate of almost 45,000, and the atmosphere at matches is much more vibrant because stadiums still have standing areas.

Ulrich Hesse, the author of Tor! The Story of German Football, told Channel 4 News that German fans had to fight for their rights.

“When Uefa decided to make all-seater grounds mandatory, the powers that be in Germany would have been happy to go along with it, but there were a lot of demonstrations and fans formed pressure groups.”

Standing areas

The German FA asked Uefa for an exemption and standing areas stayed. Hesse admires the quality of play in the English Premier League, but says some of the things that have happened off the pitch are deplorable.

“I have friends in England who can no longer afford to follow their teams and I also have friends who could afford to go to the games but don’t do it any more because the atmosphere is no longer what it used to be.”

He continued: “All through the 70s and 80s, German football fans tried to copy English fans, now they come back from games in England and say, ‘We have to make sure that this is not going to happen in Germany’.”

Transformed

Fan power has reached its height at FC St Pauli, in the port city of Hamburg. The club has been around for more than a century, but for most of that time they were an “ordinary” lower-league side living in the shadow of bigger rivals SV Hamburg. During the 1980s, their supporters transformed them into the club we know today.

St Pauli’s head of media and press, Christian Bönig, says: “The former port and amusement area changed to an alternative quarter with a lot of students, punks and people who ‘thought different’. They discovered the district and the club for themselves and brought their ‘alternative way of life’ and their thoughts to the club.”

Supporters adopted the skull and crossbones as their unofficial emblem, describing it as a symbol that they are the poor against the rich. This heady mix of piracy and politics makes St Pauli the antithesis of modern football as big business.

Bönig told Channel 4 News: “For FC St Pauli sports and politics work together very well. The fans have taken their political thoughts to the stadium from the beginning. Together we are against homophobia,racism, fascism and sexism.”

Banned

Commercial activities that could divert attention from the game, such as LED advertising displays, are banned and, after pressure from the fans, the club recently agreed never to sell the naming rights to their Millentor stadium.

In England, supporters’ groups worry that high ticket prices are pushing families out and turning football into an old man’s game. St Pauli has opened a nursery for children while their parents watch the match.

Kevin Rye, from Supporters Direct, says: “The reason they are what they are is because they are democratically owned. That should always be borne in mind; the fans set the culture because they are the club.”

You could describe the forward march of German football as a case of “Vorsprung durch fans”.

The final part of this series will look at the role of Egyptian football in the country’s revolution.

Follow @apmcfadyen on Twitter