Introduction to German Soccer

7/27/2019 Introduction to German Soccer

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Please read this short introduction before your rst soccer unit. Even if youre not really into sports youllnotice that it doesnt take much background information for you and for your students to explore Soccer

Made in Germany.

Die Bundesliga

18 teams play in Germanys top professional soccer

league, the Bundesliga. The season (die Saison)

usually starts in August and ends in May with a

break in January (Winterpause). Most of the

games take place on Saturdays. All the teams play

each other twice (home and away Heimspiel Auswrtsspiel) during the course of the season.

After 34 Spieltage the top team wins the German

championship (Meisterschaft).

At the end of the season the two teams at the

bottom of the standings (Tabelle) get relegated

into a lower division, the Zweite Bundesliga. The

two top teams from the Zweite Bundesliga advance

to the (Erste) Bundesliga. The third team from the

bottom of the Erste Bundesliga plays two playoff

games with the third-place team of the Zweite

Bundesliga (Relegationsspiele). Key words are

aufsteigen ;-) and absteigen ;-(

Usually, the three top teams at the end of the

season are eligible to participate in the Champions

League, Europes most prestigious tournament for

club teams.

German soccer is very different from professional

sports in the U.S. When a professional sports team

in the U.S. has a bad season, theres always next

season but not in European soccer. Here it is

all about survival. A bad season for a club means

being relegated into a lower league, losing its best

players and possibly the beginning of a never-ending

downward spiral.

Promotion and relegation also give your local teama chance to one day play with the big boys. A team

may start out in Germanys 13th division, the

Kreisklasse and do so well that it moves up and up

and up, past the Bezirksliga, the Landesliga, the

Regionalliga until one day it plays Bayern Mnchen

in the Bundesliga. Nothing but a dream? Just ask

the players of 1899 Hoffenheim, a tiny village near

Heidelberg, who, with the help of a soccer-crazy

sponsor rose up from the lower ranks and are now

part of Germanys elite.

Introduction to German Soccer

Copyright Goethe-Institut San Francisco

Alle Rechte vorbehaltenwww.goethe.de/stepintogerman

Erich Malter


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Platz Club Siege Unentschieden Niederlagen Tore Punkte

1 FC Bayern Mnchen 12 1 4 43:10 37

2 Borussia Dortmund 10 4 3 35:12 34

3 FC Schalke 04 11 1 5 38:22 34

4 Borussia Mnchengladbach 10 3 4 25:11 33

5 SV Werder Bremen 9 2 6 30:31 29

6 Bayer 04 Leverkusen 7 5 5 22:22 26

7 Hannover 96 5 8 4 20:24 23

8 VfB Stuttgart 6 4 7 23:20 22

9 1899 Hoffenheim 6 4 7 19:19 22

10 1. FC Kln 6 3 8 27:35 21

11 Hertha BSC Berlin 4 8 5 24:26 20

12 VfL Wolfsburg 6 2 9 23:34 20

13 Hamburger SV 4 7 6 21:27 19

14 FSV Mainz 05 4 6 7 22:29 18

15 FC Nrnberg 5 3 9 17:28 18

16 1. FC Kaiserslautern 3 7 7 13:21 16

17 FC Augsburg 3 6 8 15:28 15

18 SC Freiburg 3 4 10 21:39 13




M

ikeBenda

Ein Spieltag

There are 18 teams in the Bundesliga, which

means every weekend there are 9 matches. These

nine games comprise a Spieltag and after every

Spieltag Germans spend hours and hours studying

the current Tabelle (the standings).

A team gets three points for a win (der Sieg), one

point for a tie (das Unentschieden) and no points

for a loss (die Niederlage). So lets say Borussia

Dortmund has played seven games of which theywon four, tied one and lost two. That would give

Borussia a point total of 13 points.

Bayern Mnchen has also played seven games.

They won three, tied four and didnt lose a single

game. That would give Bayern the same point total

as Borussia Dortmund. So which team would be

ranked higher in the standings? What would be the

tiebreaker?

You need to look at the scores of all the games

played by Bayern and Borussia. Borussia won

the rst game they played by a score of 3:1 (drei

zu eins). Which means: they scored three times

and allowed one goal (ein Gegentor). In all

seven games Borussia scored a total of 20 goals

and allowed 8 goals. And now the magic word

Tordifferenz (goal difference) comes into play: 20

goals scored minus 8 goals allowed gives Borussia a

Tordifferenz of 12.

Now lets see how Bayern did. In their seven games

they scored 22 goals and allowed 9 for a goaldifference of 13. Which team has an advantage?

Bayern does! The larger the goal difference the

higher the ranking. So Bayern would be ahead of

Borussia in the Tabelle. Championships have been

decided by the slimmest of margins.

One last thing: when you look at the games and

the scores of a Spieltag they are listed like this:

Borussia Dortmund (gegen) Werder Bremen 3:1.

The rst team listed is the home team. The rst

number you see (3) is the number of goals the home

team scored.


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Fuball International

Having won three World Cup (Weltmeisterschaft)

titles and three European championships

(Europameisterschaft) Germany boasts one of the

worlds most successful teams. The FIFA World Cup

takes place every four years and is the worlds most

widely viewed sporting event.

The next three World Cups will be hosted by Brazil

in 2014, Russia in 2018, and Qatar in 2022 and

Germany hopes to be represented in each event.But to do so Germany must rst make it through a

tough qualication phase (die Qualikation), which

starts two years before the World Cup nals.

The European Soccer Championship, often referred

to as the Euro or EM, is held every four years

in the even-numbered year between World Cup

tournaments. The most recent championship was

co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine in 2012. The next

European Championship will take place in France.

In preparation for these two main championships

and the preceding qualifying phases the

Nationalmannschaft plays Freundschaftsspiele

(friendlies) against teams from all around the globe.

The German national team which is governed by

the DFB (Deutscher Fuball-Bund German Soccer

Federation) has had many star players over the

years including Kaiser Franz Beckenbauer, goalie

(Torwart) Oliver Kahn, striker (Strmer) Jrgen

Klinsmann (currently coach of the U.S. national team)

and Lothar Matthus who has represented Germany

in a record 150 games. Head coach of the current

team (Bundestrainer) is Joachim (Jogi) Lw.

While the national teams have their World Cup

or Europameisterschaft Europes best club

teams compete in the Champions League. This

prestigious and lucrative tournament takes place

every year and is played over the course of the

season with the nal (das Finale das Endspiel)taking place in May. The top teams of Europes

national soccer leagues like the Bundesliga,

Englands Premier League or Spains La Liga are

eligible to participate. This is where club teams like

Bayern Mnchen (which has won the competition

four times), Manchester United or Real Madrid with

all their international super stars strut their stuff

and hope to make hundreds of millions of dollars in

the process.

mustapha_ennaimi


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Frauenfuball

In 1955, West Germany banned womens soccer,

citing concerns over injuries to body and soul and

propriety and decency. Since lifting the ban 15

years later, the DFB, Germanys soccer federation,

has been determined to grow the game and the

results speak for themselves: two World Cup titles,

seven European championships and an increasing

fan base.

Germany now boasts close to a million registeredfemale players and more than 6,000 womens

teams. At the top of the pyramid, players compete in

the Frauen-Bundesliga.

The two big powerhouses in the Frauen Bundesliga

are Turbine Potsdam and 1. FFC Frankfurt, one of

which has won the title since 2001. A large number

of foreign players play in the league, among them

U.S. right back Ali Krieger. Frankfurt has won three

womens Champions League titles, while Turbine has

won two.

Birgit Prinz, Frankfurts star player for more than a

decade, holds the record for most appearances on

the national team and is the all-time leading goal

scorer. She has received the FIFA World Player of

the Year award three times and is the joint overall

top goal scorer at the Womens World Cup. In 2011,

right after the World Cup held in Germany, Birgit

Prinz announced the end of her playing career.

Even though the German national team didnt quite

live up to the high expectations, the 2011 World

Cup was a huge success and a veritable festival of

soccer: 800,000 supporters followed the games in

the stadiums (an average of 26,000 per match) andmore than 17,000,000 German TV viewers tuned in

for the host teams quarter-nal with Japan (nearly a

quarter of the population).

Bundeswehr Fotos

Introduction to German Soccer

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