I had the chance to attend my very first live European football game on this past trip to Dusseldorf. My homie Andy Chiu is a fanatic of his hometown faithful Borussia Dortmund and he made it sure to try his best to make me a life long fan. Mission accomplished I’d say as we saw them play on Saturday, November 27th. While the game itself didn’t carry much hype since first place Dortmund were facing bottom dwellers Borussia Mongengladbach, the atmosphere was something that many people said would be amazing. Time Magazine voted Signal Iduna Park (aka Westfalenstadion) as the best football stadium in Europe with a capacity of over 80,000. I couldn’t imagine a decent sized town filling a stadium as even back home at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, I had never experienced it to full-capacity with the closest packed house being around 53,000 to watch Canada draw 1-1 with Brazil in a World Cup 1994 warm-up ages ago.
We arrived about 2 hours before the game and while there wasn’t an American-style tail-gate party going on, there were a decent amount of people kicking around enjoying beer, traditional hot wine and of course wurst! It was pretty cold, but luckily a wealth of Dortmund merchandise meant team-branded long parkas, beanies, stadium jackets and of course scarves for many.
The stadium itself isn’t anything particular to marvel at from a technological stand-point, however the one standing terrace section is truly amazing. Filled with a huge number of standing fans engaging in some impressive synchronized chants, it’s the largest remaining terrace in Europe at almost 25,000. We sat at the absolute top of the stadium but since the seating is so steep, the view really wasn’t all that bad at all. However being relatively far from the action meant that the game play looked pretty slow and the atmosphere lacked a bit. From a top, the average Sunday Leaguer might not stand out as bad as you think haha. There were definitely some comical instances of a die-hard Dortmund fan with his two little kids in tow absolutely giving it to the ref as his offspring sat back a little deeper in their seats.
A 4-1 scoreline later, Andy and I came away happy campers. Ji-Un and Huy were both first timers to a Dortmund game and while they had watched football games in the past, the game atmosphere was definitely something to appreciate and respect.
Coming on a cheap transfer from J-League division 2 team, #23 Shinji Kagawa lit it up. Pretty funny, our foursome of people watching the game consisted of a bunch of Asian guys = brunt of many Kagawa jokes by the stewardesses.
A Borussia Dormund game is something incomparable. Albeit I haven’t had the opportunity to watch a lot of sporting events including the NFL/NBA or even NHL, 80,000 fans deep that know nothing more than Dortmund and football is something rather difficult to trump. Check some Youtube footage of the fans here.
-Eugene
