NO DICE
FIRST EDITION
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Berlin football in words, photos and illustrations “Football? It’s like chess, just with no dice” It’s a shame that the quote is apocryphal. Prince Poldi never said it, but it illustrates something that so many people were happy to believe it was true for a long time. It is the beautiful poem of the dumb. In many ways, like football itself. A game that can be as elegant as it can be brutal or as cerebral as it can be, well, stupid. We have always believed that football is a perfect way to understand and get inside a city and its people. This is as much the case in Berlin as anywhere else. Berlin - with its unique history of togetherness and division, of war and peace, of immigrants and locals - tells so many stories through its football.
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Though it’s not been considered a ‘football town’ since the game started being played in Germany, the amount of people that play and watch the game in Berlin is astonishing. The Berlin Fußball Verband alone has over 100,000 members. We aim to provide the slightest snapshot of that. Football is a language in itself, it will always cross over the bullshit boundaries of semantics. Although No Dice is in English (the practical reason being that it is our native tongue) it is not meant to exclude the German fan. No matter what language you speak, we sincerely hope that every man, woman and child with a scarf draped around their neck, a whistle between their pursed lips, or with a ball at their feet in the Hauptstadt will enjoy our magazine, and continue to pursue that impossible dream - to enjoy the beautiful game.
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NO DICE FIRST EdITIOn CO N TE NTS Page 9.
Interview with Uwe Neuhaus, by Jacob Sweetman
Page 21.
Tennis Borussia returns to its roots, by Stephen Glennon
Page 36.
Berlin Referees - a photo essay by Ian Stenhouse
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No Dice are: Jacob Sweetman - Ipswich Town, 1.FC Union Stephen Glennon - Sampdoria, TeBe Jude Flegel - Crystal Palace, 1.FC Union Emily Sweetman - football agnostic Ian Stenhouse - Hearts, Hertha BSC
photo by Matt Grayson
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Photo: BAK07
Don´t look BAK. Berlin Athletik Klub 07 look forward to the new heights of the Regionalliga Nord
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INTERVIEW : UWE NEUHAUS by Jacob Sweetman In early 2007, Uwe Neuhaus was appointed head coach at 1.FC Union Berlin. At the time they weren’t so much a club in transition as merely a collection of raw materials that had the potential, with time, to be turned into something greater. There was no roof on the tatty but charming Stadion an der Alten Försterei, their home (in various guises) since 1920. The team had just avoided relegation to the Oberliga, a repetition of which could well have heard the death knells ringing out across Köpenick for the fiercely proud, but at the time impoverished club, despite the impetus brought in by the new chairman - a fan, no less - Dirk Zingler. The first game of that season was at home against Fortuna Düsseldorf, a team that have followed Union, and therefore also Neuhaus, step by step, league by league, over the last five or so years. Despite ending up with only ten men on the field, Fortuna won 1-0. The pain on Torsten Mattuschka’s face would have been plain to see at the end, but his shirt was pulled up to his eyes - he had missed a penalty - but Neuhaus was proud of him. He had shown the qualities of leadership that would, in time, make him captain. The team, though, needed to show more of the fighting spirit that Neuhaus knew was necessary for the fans to accept him as the man to take this club back from the depths. The new boss was already making up his mind about his squad. The make-up of his team, which he knew would have to be “Eisern” - made of Iron - to succeed in this league, but also to keep the fans satisfied. He is the kind of man who respects skill, but it has to come alongside the work ethic. That Ruhrpott sensibility: they are sensible and solid people down there. It is football country, but it is also hard working country. They don’t suffer fools gladly. I remember that Düsseldorf match vividly, because it was the first game I ever saw in Berlin, having moved here a couple of months previously. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with a kick off at the strangely normal time of 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Obviously TV didn’t have much interest in a battle between two teams in the Regionalliga Nord, at the start of a long season where the only tangible goal was to finish in the top ten. The first and second placed teams would skip merrily straight up to the 2.Bundesliga, the next eight would make up the numbers in the brand new 3.Liga which would commence from 2008. Uwe Neuhaus, at that time, had little to lose. It would be the managing of the expectations created as he increasingly succeeded that would come closest to being his undoing. They ended up so close to that second place. A miracle was needed on the final day against Oberhausen. A 4-0 victory (with Düsseldorf also losing) would have sufficed, but
Emily Sweetman
there were few among the 14,000 there that day who didn’t believe it could happen. It was the end of a fantastic season, after all. Neuhaus had delivered, and more. Oberhausen spanked Union 3-0 that day, but the loss mattered little. It was blindingly hot again, meaning the celebratory plastic sheeting stretched out across the terrace behind the goal may (in hindsight) have not been such a good idea. A guy who must have weighed 20 stone fell down the full length of the tribune in the heat, his seemingly unstoppable momentum eventually ceasing at the bottom. A couple of fans picked him up, dusted him down and gave him another beer. It was that kind of a day. The last one at the old Alte Försterei. Not only had the team moved on (Marco Gebhardt provided strength and technical ability, Mattuschka was flourishing, Karim Benyamina was scoring regularly, and young players such as Christian Stuff had come through - Neuhaus had found the foundations for a successful, occasionally stylish, but also steely football team), but with the unbelievable help of the fans for whom the word dedication barely musters justice, the club was too. In spite of the capital city’s intransigence, they were going to rebuild themselves. The fable of the Alte Försterei is for another day, but within this story of hundreds of fans donating many thousands of man hours, for free, to rebuild their stadium, was Uwe Neuhaus looking on, sometimes even helping out as an electrician, and trying to understand these people. These fans. Their dedication was astonishing. He must have realised then that they could be tricky customers to deal with too. They were almost too close to their club. ----------------------------That first year, 2007 / 2008, was to be one of the easiest rides that Neuhaus would be given at the start of a season. He had time to rebuild and the patience and grace of the fans as one. But when I met him recently, it was the week after a 4-0 mauling away to Dynamo Dresden that epitomised a horrible beginning for the club as a whole to 2011 / 2012. Union had been knocked out of the cup in the first round to the Regionalliga side Rot-Weiss Essen. His former club. The 4-0 dealt out by newly promoted Dynamo was the mirror image of the score against Greuther Fürth in the first game at home. A routine win against Paderborn had started with the unveiling of a banner that simply stated ‘Unzufrieden’ - unhappy - with the UN spelt out in red to avoid any ambiguities as to who it was aimed at. The three points that day took little of the pressure off. Paderborn are easy. Dresden, though, are rivals. The players had looked spineless, and had frozen in the glare of a game against a team with a shared
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UWE NEUHAUS history in the former DDR. Sitting back at his desk, a Marlboro light still smouldering away in the ashtray and the walnut hew of his summer holiday tan not yet completely worn out by the stress of this horrible start to the campaign, Neuhaus reflected on the differences between when he had taken over and now. “The preconditions that [first] season were totally different, as I had just taken over a team that the year before had only stayed up on goal difference.... The levels of expectation weren’t as huge.” The growing of these expectations is best shown by the fact that nobody minded being knocked out at the same stage in his first year by the Bundesliga’s Eintracht Frankfurt. “Getting knocked out of the cup is totally different when you are a second division team against a Regionalliga team.” He looked stung, drawn almost, reflecting on the bad start. Events on the pitch were bad enough, but attention was being increasingly focussed off it. This was new to me. I had attended almost every home game, and several away, in the last five years and had never seen sections of the fans arguing amongst themselves like they were said to have done at Dresden. I had never seen them openly turning on the man who was now the second longest-serving manager in the top three divisions. The success in ensuring 2nd division survival before time the previous season had been overshadowed by the rancorous reading of the headlines. The club’s all-time top scorer and fans favourite, Karim Benyamina, had been allowed to leave for FSV Frankfurt and naturally scored a typically elegant volley against his former employers in the opening fixture. The manager (in the German sense, a director of football to the English) Christian Beeck had been fired in a surprise announcement in May. To many of the fans, Beeck was Union as much as Benyamina. He was the man whose quote (whilst playing for Energie Cottbus) “we played fairly, with the necessary brutality” would also sum up the black sheep of Köpenick whose cries of ‘Eisern’ literally translate as ‘Iron’. Beeck understood what they needed and what they expect from their team. They want to see fighting for the cause. Not for a single man. Not for Uwe Neuhaus, it seemed. But he remains sanguine about it. “There was seemingly a lot of disquiet in the summer. Some personnel decisions that were taken didn’t have the complete support [of the fans], and a few were surprised. I believe that this plays a part.... the last week’s headlines...” He trails off, talking about the performances again. He likes to talk football. Not the other bullshit. He says he trusts his players, and with his single mindedness, is sure how to get the best out of them. Not for him the Jose Mourinho ‘lightning rod’ technique, where the Portuguese soaks up all of the off field pressure on behalf of his squad. “I just try to regulate the pressure. You can’t take it all off their shoulders. This last week is a good example. They have seen the reaction of the fans, and taken it on board. They
Emily Sweetman
read the newspapers, they know that the pressure is there, but I have to redirect it on the training pitch.” He says simply that his methods towards training won’t change due to external circumstances, or due to the poor results. Why should they, he asks. There are always specifics that come up in the analysis after a game, but he says that that is completely normal. But this, in many ways, is at the root of some of the fans’ problems with his management. He is seen as an autocrat. As an inflexible dominant manager who won’t see another way than his own. His accusers say this was why Beeck was pushed out, and this is what prompted a rash of ‘1.FC Neuhaus’ headlines in the weeks that followed. Looking in, as an Englishman, this is an argument that I have never fully understood. Nobody tells Alex Ferguson or Arsene Wenger who to buy (or not to buy in Wenger’s case). Neuhaus sees it simply. “In England they do it one way and in Germany we do it another. Everything that is uncomfortable is received critically at first. I don’t understand the anger, my methods of working haven’t changed in six years... This was a false impression given by the press.” This had followed the fallout from Felix Magath’s unhappy second season at Schalke, where he was ridiculed by all and sundry for wielding too much power. But Neuhaus’ mention of the press is telling. He seems to be irritated by the workings of the game in the 21st century, but does he accept that the press have a job to do the same as he does?“Years ago, there were barely any headline stories, ones that these days you see in different newspapers every week. I have to accept it, but whether I like it or not is a different thing.” ----------------------------------------------Uwe Neuhaus has been through tough patches in football before. Experiences that shaped his responses to the game’s seemingly permanent state of crisis. In 1990, SG Wattenscheid 09 had made it to the promised land of the top flight. It was unprecedented and Uli Hoeneß described it as “the worst thing that could happen to the Bundesliga.” As minnows, Wattenscheid knew they would have to use all of their guile to stay up. They had to fight together and learn how to come back from the inevitable bad results that would follow. That Neuhaus is such a determined and hard-working manager is due in many ways to the fact that he was already in his late twenties when Wattenscheid got promoted. He had honed his skills in the lower leagues. The players may not have been as naturally talented as some in the top flight, but the architect of their promotion, Hannes Bongartz, knew how to make them stand up to the best. This included a retort to Hoeneß’ words
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UWE NEUHAUS in a 3-2 home win over Bayern that kept them in a surprising tenth position. That they were that high at all was because of a remarkable bounce back in form. A formative period certainly for Neuhaus. A few months earlier they had been humiliated 7-0 by Hoeneß’ Bavarians (then managed by Jupp Heynckes). It should have been eight, Stefan Reuters’ penalty having cannoned into the post. Following the mauling, Wattenscheid lost 4-0 at home to local arch rivals Bochum, and then 4-2 away at Nürnberg. He struggles to think back, slurps his coffee and sneaks a glance at the fags on his desk, thinking another one might help the memory along. “Well, these phases are a little bit different as a player than as a trainer.... as a trainer you have complete responsibility As a player you can play without it, you have other goals on the pitch, naturally whilst trying to help the team. But, if you have experienced this situation before it can help to bounce back.” He chuckles when he says that he played in every position, even as goalkeeper a couple of times. As a kid he wanted to be a striker. He wanted to be Gerd Müller, but that is hardly surprising. You could throw a stick into a group of German men of a certain age, and you know that it would hit someone who wanted once to be ‘Der Bomber’. He became either a holding midfielder or a central defender. The positions where you can see the whole game developing in front of you. The positions that can be played with the brain as well as the feet. Experience counts at the back, and it counts to draw on as a trainer. Wattenscheid stayed up for three long seasons, but he knows all too well they had it easier then. It was a less complicated time when moustaches (his own inelegant little lip crawler included) ruled the Bundesliga, and football could hardly seem to be quite as significant in comparison to the events happening on their doorstep every day with the re-unification of the country. “It’s more complicated for players nowadays, the whole media has changed. You only made it into the headlines with something spectacular in those days. Today you only need to be photographed somewhere at 11pm and it’s on Facebook. Agents also play a completely different role today.” He sighs. “The whole business has changed.” He doesn’t look like a man who is on Facebook, but there is also a contradiction here. He has stressed the club needed to go in the new direction football was headed. They didn’t need another football man any more. They needed a businessman. Hence the replacement of Beeck with Nico Schäfer. But it seems as though he still pines for those times when the game was a whole lot simpler. ---------------------------------------------Union walked the 3rd division in 2008 / 2009, all the while playing ‘away’. While the fans worked tirelessly on the
stadium, Union were playing their games at the unloved JahnSportpark in Prenzlauer Berg. The ‘Tierpark’ as they call it: it is only fit for animals, the home of BFC Dynamo’s greatest European nights, the memories of which are still resented in Köpenick. Many fans stayed away entirely for one of the best seasons the club has ever enjoyed. But this is the way with ‘Kultklubs’, ‘Traditionsklubs’, call them what you will. You are supporting an idea as much as 11 players and a boss. Neuhaus knows this implicitly. His three managerial stations have all been at such clubs - Essen, Dortmund, Union. They are all what they are (at differing levels) purely because of the fans’ particular connection to the team and the area. It would be impossible for Unioners to countenance playing outside of Köpenick. Simply impossible. Naturally the conversation comes back around to the pressure in these places particularly. He beams with pride when he says “in everyday life in Köpenick the people confront you with tactics. That is surely a huge point. Tradition is founded from what is beautiful. But also through the bad times the tradition is always there. To get 7,000 average attendances in the Regionalliga is....” he trails off again. “I don’t see that reaction at all other clubs.” After a victory in Regensburg in 2009 that ensured Union would be the first winners of the new third division, he was speechless, simply managing to squeeze out a couple of cliches for the throngs of press. The fans carried him aloft. In their proudest moment, he was the star of the show. But how does it compare to his other achievements? It really is impressive, but this guy has been at Dortmund, where a wall of 25,000 people sit in the south stand alone. His face lightens enormously talking about nights like the time that the Dortmund side (where he was assistant trainer to Matthias Sammer) beat AC Milan 4-0 at home in the first leg of the UEFA cup semi final (“an absolute highlight in life, the memories of which always remain. It’s a shame we lost in the final [to PSV], it was a crazily emotional time”). “Everything in its way is special about days like those. To reach a European final is a different dimension, but despite that it’s not more meaningful than the promotion to the second division with Union. I believe they both belong at the same level, at a higher dimension than winning the German title or the cup.” He loves talking about football. This is probably at the root of his annoyance at the modern game and the press intrusion. He likes to talk about football. Not politics. -------------------------------------------------To many Neuhaus would always be an outsider, no matter his achievements at the team, though he is (arguably) the most successful manager they have ever had. The spectre of the DDR is never far away at this club, and outsiders, ‘Wessis’, are often dismissed as being interfering know nothings. The inference being that ‘they’ didn’t live through the tough times
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UWE NEUHAUS in a former country that formed the club in much the same way that the Galapagos Islands were spat out of the sea floor, the magma cooling to form spectacular new bodies. Though incredibly welcoming, the fans of 1.FC Union Berlin can also be a suspicious bunch at times. At the same time that he was trying to sort out the on-field stuff, the newspapers turned their ire onto president Zingler due to the discovery that he had served in army group strongly connected to the Stasi during his military service.The Union wagons circled around their own. Neuhaus remained silent, already angered by the heavy criticism of his role at the club, but also in the knowledge that he would never be an ‘Ossi’. The attacks were coming from without - the club made it clear. It was journalists, they said, who had never lived in the DDR and couldn’t possibly understand the pressures a young man would be under in the regime - and he wanted to remain within. It was best to keep his head down and try and get some results on the pitch. He simply told the Berliner Kurier at the time that “we must win to put a stop to this rubbish”. He performs a Cruyff turn around my mention of the chairman’s past and sticks to the basics, merely saying that his job is to win on the pitch. There are no excuses. Uwe Neuhaus is charming whilst at the same time obdurate. He knows he has to be that alpha male that you find so often in football to succeed. His watch must weigh as much as my bag. His hair is immaculate and the shoes, spotless as ever. But he is also unfailingly patient, polite and generous to a foreign writer, stumbling through a language that he doesn’t really understand. Immediately I’m convinced that he couldn’t work any other way. To take away the determination that gives him his weaker side, the side that refuses to countenance outside opinions for instance, would take away the very thing that makes him good at his job. Looking back through the sides he has brought through at Union, there is a common thread. Players such as Nico Patschinski and Guido Spork were quickly wheedled out for not toeing the party line. For not taking things as seriously as he does. Players such as the outrageously gifted Santi Kolk too have gone because they had trouble understanding the basic needs of the German football fan in general, and the Union one in particular. The need for fight, for aggression, but most importantly the need to never give up. As they say in German, ‘Immer weiter’. His teams have relied on players such as Marco Gebhardt, Patrick Kohlmann, Daniel Göhlert, Christian Stuff and Torsten Mattuschka - players that fought. Another of the frequent criticisms of him is that he sticks to his favourites whether they are performing or not. In many cases his detractors have a point. John Jairo Mosquera couldn’t buy a goal last year at times, but he would never be dropped. He only stopped using Macchambes Younga-Mouhani when it became absolutely clear that he didn’t have the legs for football at the highest levels any more. He is also accused of being too frequently negative away from home. They see his pragmatism as being an alien concept at times. This is what the fans were
so angry about after the Dresden game. It was up to Neuhaus to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again. To lose is one thing, but to lose without trying is a cardinal sin. I mention this in a comparison to English fans and he tells the story of how as a youngster his club side played against a team from Darlington. They were older, tougher “and they just flew in to you”. He was impressed. Neuhaus always lost horribly against these teams but he learned a vital lesson about the fight. It is this which makes this complicated man tick, and this which has made him so, at times belligerent, but at times calm and understanding of others faults. If they can’t be avoided, then so be it. But if it’s through lack of trying... there will be hell to pay. It seems he needs the pressure to remain on him to succeed and it seems he actually enjoys the confrontations at times. He had done his army service himself as a helicopter technician in the old west. It was something he had to do, but never has he thought that he would rather have stuck at it, despite the fact that he has to deal with all of this. Smiling at the inference he points out that although it should be simple - this cable goes here and that cable goes there and the thing flies - there is never a way out of personal responsibility. He smiles away my suggestion that life in the army would be somehow easier. People die through a human error in a helicopter. He hasn’t got it so bad dealing with a few pissed off football fans. “There’s not always sunshine in a life in the middle, a couple of raindrops will also fall, but it’s not so bad, this pressure.” As I write this now, the storm clouds seem to have passed over. A ship that seemed to be listing has been righted, and results have taken Union back to the top ten spot in the league that he set out as his goal before the start of the season (a prediction that caused him more problems than he probably needed at the time). Uwe Neuhaus’s faith in his players - those who are prepared to put in the hours at least - has paid off. But I had a final question when things seemed at their nadir. Is he still having fun? He beamed back across the desk and let that answer for itself. It seems he loves the fight more than anything else. To pit himself against the best and the hardest, in the knowledge that his hard work, hard ethics and thick skin will see him through. And who’d bet against him being at Union for another five years?
Jacob Sweetman 2011
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Hansa Stadion, Weissensee 16.09.11 Roter Stern NordOst - FFC Lichtenrade Ost 4-2
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LFC Berlin- T端rkiyemspor 3-3 24.09.11
Emily Sweetman
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Tennis Borussia returns to its roots by Stephen Glennon Most football fans would give their right arm for their team to be backed by wealthy investors desperate for on-field success. However, after two such speculations turning to disaster, Tennis Borussia Berlin is more interested in cementing its unique philosophy than topping tables. Stephen Glennon met some TeBe fans to discuss why they have embraced the club’s recent relegation to the sixth division. June 12th, 2011, and there’s a game on in Berlin’s FriedrichLudwig-Jahn-Sportpark. There’s no police presence Considering that one of these teams will be relegated to Germany’s sixth division at the final whistle, one would be excused for expecting at least some of the crowd to be disgruntled and angry. The levels of expectation that football fans can muster up leaves little patience for failure on the scale of relegation. After a tense draw and extra-time, Tennis Borussia Berlin (TeBe) lost, and their subsequent relegation to the Berlin-Liga was their second in consecutive years. As their triumphant opponents Borea Dresden celebrated retaining their fifth division status, the TeBe players slunk dejectedly over to the terrace, where many of their purple-clad followers had clambered up on the large, imposing barriers separating the stand from pitch. Like any symbolic moment, the significance of what happened next can be understood in a variety of contexts. Buenos Aires a couple of weeks after that game in Berlin offers one. River Plate, one of Argentina’s most famous teams, suffered a similar ignominy to TeBe in being relegated to their lowestever divisional status. Their fans climbed fences too. They did it to invade the pitch, causing the match to be abandoned. They then rampaged out onto the streets of the capital, rioting and battling with police. Water cannons were used to disperse the crowds as the area around the stadium turned into a war zone. To the overwhelming majority of football fans, the River Plate supporter’s reactions were a baffling, inexplicable overreaction. The TeBe fans, however, after climbing the fences of the Jahnpark, applauded their players, shook their hands and thanked them for their efforts in a season that saw only five league victories, a series of dreadful hammerings and, seemingly, precious little to be thankful for. To the overwhelming majority of football fans, the TeBe supporter’s reactions were a baffling, inexplicable underreaction. The reasons why the TeBe players deserved applause and thanks, to an outsider, are far from immediately clear. This is because TeBe, despite its average attendances of only around
300 per game, has one of the most absorbing histories, one of the most well-developed and loyal fan scenes and one of the most unshakable philosophies of any football team in the world, but, due to events of the last fifteen years, is mostly viewed negatively by the general football-supporting public. TeBe was founded in 1902 in Berlin-Mitte’s old Scheunenviertel, an area with a large population of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In the precarious Twenties between world wars, TeBe were one of Berlin’s top teams, frequently battling with Hertha BSC for the Berlin championship, losing four finals in a row before finally overcoming their rivals in 1932. Having a large proportion of Jewish members, more than any other Berlin club, TeBe was used to recurring hostility from the opposition, and its short period of success came to an end in 1932 when Nazi decree banned Jewish players from participation in organised competition. After the war, Holocaust survivor and TV personality Hans Rosenthal was TeBe President from 1965 to 1973, and he is remembered every time TeBe scores a goal with the stadium announcer repeating a version of his catchphrase “Wir sind der Meinung, das war…”, to which the crowd roars “SPITZE!” (We think that was… GREAT!) These days, anti-fascism is the basis upon which the TeBe fan scene is built, along with strong opposition to any form of discrimination, be it based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. According to Carsten, lifelong TeBe fan and co-founder of the website wesavetebe.de, the atmosphere at TeBe’s Mommsenstadion was always incomparable to that at other stadia. It was “pleasant and different”, he claims, even in the Seventies as the team reached the pinnacle of its sporting success – two short visits to the Bundesliga that both featured plucky performances but ultimately ended with relegation in 1975 and 1977. There is, however, nothing particularly noteworthy about a liberal-minded bunch of fans who create a pleasant atmosphere, and it was not until the late Nineties that the TeBe philosophy really began to develop. The catalyst was one that, in these days of ambitious oligarchs, American tycoons and Arab sheikhs in search of expensive playthings, is all too familiar – a rapid injection of cash from a group of investors that don’t willingly answer questions about their motives. Back then, without the numerous examples of teams going bust following the withdrawal of large-scale investment, there
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TeBe was none of the dubious suspicion that accompanies financing of that sort today. As the gift horse’s mouth opened wide, TeBe closed its eyes tightly shut. The benefactors were the investment trust, Göttinger Gruppe, and they seemed happy to invest freely in order to achieve the maximum amount of sporting success in the shortest amount of time possible.
from inside the club. The Göttinger Gruppe, in their efforts to achieve success as quickly as possible with their new plaything, neglected to attempt to understand the wishes of the TeBe fans. The players who joined were drawn by cash rather than any particular attraction to the famous old purple Tennis Borussia shirt.
TeBe smashed their way into the 2.Bundesliga, finishing thirty-two points clear of their nearest rivals, Dynamo Dresden, without losing a single game in the 1997/98 season. High calibre players such as Uwe Rösler and Toni Micevski were lured to Berlin with exorbitant sums of money in time for the 2.Bundesliga campaign.
The team’s second season in the 2.Bundesliga in 1999 started excellently, with promotion looking eminently possible until March, when ten of the last twelve games resulted in defeat. Relegation was narrowly avoided, but off the pitch, things were even worse.
Naturally, their rivals for promotion were not impressed at how uneven TeBe’s new-found riches had made the playing field, even if much of the resentment that was directed at the club for having apparently bought success is somewhat off-target: in the early and mid-Nineties, TeBe were often promotion candidates and the cash injection simply gave them the push required to not only be able to win promotion but also consolidate their 2.Bundesliga position. Carsten’s co-founder of wesavetebe.de, Christian Rudolph, can verify the animosity that TeBe fans endured, having himself been part of it. “I had a really bad view of TeBe ... [they were] a dislikeable team in the 2.Bundesliga times,” he said. But in 2007, he started an internship with the club and saw the reality. “[My opinion] was very quickly revised. I’m not even really a football fan, I always found football too chavvy. But I really found a home here ... it’s not the usual rowdiness and abusiveness that you have with other teams.” Carsten identifies the antipathy that the TeBe fans had to endure in the Nineties as key in the development of the fan scene. “TeBe had a pretty strange appearance to the outside world and a lot of bad things happened that directed a lot of hatred towards the team. It was a good thing, almost, to see how people dealt with the hate and persevered. That’s a particular quality [of TeBe fans] .... we’d go to 1. FC Union Berlin and there’d be bottles thrown at the old granddads in our crowd. That really politicised our fan scene, as well as simultaneously immunising it against people that we simply don’t want to have around.” Especially from East Berlin came a great deal of resentment towards the newly-rich team from the already-wealthy district of Charlottenburg. Beliefs, however, are moulded and reinforced by adversity. They must exist beforehand, of course, but it is only when they are threatened do they reinforce, recruit, and advance. This is exactly what happened on the terraces at TeBe in the late Nineties, as the fans started to organise and stand firm. TeBe fans were defending their way of life from external sources, but soon it became clear that the biggest threat was
Current Tennis Borussia chairman, Andreas Voigt, remembers the period well. He was running the TeBe marketing department that year and, as a true and pragmatic TeBe fan, recalls that season as a success, since relegation was avoided. One can’t help but feel that his über-ambitious bosses did not agree, and as the Deutscher Fussball Bund (DFB) required guarantees about the club’s financial health in order to be allowed to participate in the following season’s 2.Bundesliga, perhaps the Göttinger Gruppe saw an easy way to disengage themselves from their little experiment. According to Voigt, “back then, the DFB required a bank guarantee and the Göttinger Gruppe had one from their own bank ... but the DFB didn’t accept it. I believe the Göttinger Gruppe would have gotten the relevant guarantee from a different bank, but they were stubborn about it and had a dispute with the DFB. That’s where everything went wrong because the DFB didn’t grant them a licence for the second division. You could speculate though, whether that was the Göttinger Gruppe’s intention or whether they really were just too proud, but that’s not a question that I can answer.” TeBe was forcibly relegated to the third division, and consequently lost the support of the Göttinger Gruppe (whose fortunes were also on the decline, finally starting insolvency proceedings in 2007) and the vast majority of their expensively-assembled squad. A second consecutive relegation was inevitable, and a year and a half after pushing for promotion to the Bundesliga, TeBe was floundering in the fourth division. While the sporting side of things may have been difficult for TeBe fans after the turn of the century, there was a sense of relief amongst the fans at having their club back. The following seven years in the Oberliga Nord saw consistent, if unspectacular performances, and even featured four victories in the Berliner Pokal (Berlin Cup). By 2007, as TeBe’s financial affairs reached an even keel and on-the-field performances became increasingly reliable, they were again attracting the attention of large-scale investors. This time it was the secretive Swiss company Treasure AG providing the funds. With the benefit of hindsight, one can criticise the club for
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TeBe once more accepting vast amounts of cash without either asking the right questions of the sponsors or bearing the wishes of the supporters in mind. This time, however, was somewhat different to the experiences with the Göttinger Gruppe. Treasure AG, for all their unwillingness to speak to the press about the source of their wealth or their plans for TeBe, only had one of their employees on the TeBe board of directors, leaving most of the decision-making in the hands of the club. Unfortunately, the hands of the club was where the problem lay – the boss was now Mario Weinkauf, a former President of hated rivals BFC Dynamo, a team that in many ways resembles the ideological opposite to TeBe’s own convictions. TeBe fans could not get over this link to their adversary, and how Weinkauf, having had his Treasure AG proposals rejected by Dynamo when he was there, had simply looked for the next potential vehicle for his plans without any consideration of what sort of vehicle it was. What happened next followed a familiar pattern – the 2008/9 Oberliga was dominated with eighteen points to spare over second-placed Dynamo (who, at that point, must surely have been regretting their decision to turn down Weinkauf’s investment) and, as promotion to the Regionalliga was attained, the sponsorship was withdrawn when Treasure AG’s member of the TeBe board of directors became embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal. Andreas Voigt looks back on the days of the Treasure AG sponsorship in the same way as all TeBe fans – confusion tinged with sadness. “If I’m honest I didn’t understand the Treasure AG sponsorship. They supported us really well in the Oberliga but didn’t want it public. They didn’t want to be on the jersey and didn’t want any advertisements and were very media-shy – I don’t even know if the managers of Treasure AG ever carried out any interviews. They also didn’t officially explain where they earn their money and there was no internet presence. It was all a little shady and you just had to ask yourself why were they giving Tennis Borussia their money. The only explanation I have is that the directors just wanted a bit of fun with a football team and they just had some money spare.” And so, after TeBe’s relegation from the 2009/10 Regionalliga thanks to the inevitable insolvency proceedings after Treasure AG pulled the plug, we find ourselves almost up-to-date with proceedings. Just as before, the financial situation meant that most players departed, and a second consecutive relegation, after that game against Borea Dresden, followed. We still, however, don’t understand why the fans were so appreciative after that defeat. Surely the powers that be selling out for a second time is more a reason to be entirely disgruntled than politely sympathetic? The answer lies in the fact that, post-Treasure AG, everyone involved at the club was determined that nothing of the sort should happen again. Twice bitten, change the structures to
ensure shyness. These days, the fans are rooted in the day-to-day running of the club. As well as founding the aforementioned wesavetebe. de, the aim of which is to raise funds for the club through donations and increasing the team’s visibility on a local level in order to attract small-scale investment, the matchday programme is written and produced by the fans. They also run the club’s website. Perhaps the biggest change was the appointment of Andreas Voigt as chairman. He is a TeBe fan, and utterly lacking in the airs and graces one might expect from someone running a football club. His policy is one of forthright honesty towards the fans, with the result that, upon starting last year’s Oberliga campaign, everyone was fully furnished with the knowledge that survival that year would be nothing short of a miracle. Voigt elaborates: “...we are very open with our fans and we always say what is really happening. We didn’t promise anything about staying in the division and maybe that’s why everyone was so tightly-knit for the Dresden game – there was no incentive for negativity. Everyone was obviously very sad but many thanked us for our work all season and the atmosphere at that game gave us strength to get working on the next season.” And the fans are on exactly the same page as the boss. “... since [the takeovers], the club has been in the hands of people like Andy Voigt. He stands with us and celebrates with us and, simply put, he’s a fan”, says Carsten. “[The TeBe philosophy] is carried on by idealism and it’s like that with Andy.” This marriage of bureaucracy with fan participation is far from unique in German football (St. Pauli and Union being two of the more notable examples), but one can’t help suspect that it is a structure that can only work in the lower leagues, and one that is inherently impossible to combine with success. That St. Pauli’s recent promotion to the Bundesliga came at a point when their core base of fans fear that the club’s identity is disappearing due to gentrification is telling. Sebastian, another staunch TeBe fan despite growing up in Mainz, has an answer. “What is success?” he asks rhetorically. “Realistically, no-one expects us to be back in professional football in the foreseeable future.” The experiences of the last fifteen years have moulded the expectations of these fans to such an extent that they are almost glad about TeBe’s demise. Finally, the club belongs to them again, and what league they are in is of little consequence as long as the club retains its identity. When asked about the theoretical idea of another big sponsor arriving to pull TeBe out of their current position, Carsten, Christian and Sebastian suddenly focus. We’re meeting after the first game of the new Berlin-Liga season, a 6-2 win over BFC Preussen, and spirits and beer intake are proportionately high. Until now, it’s been joking and fooling around and
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TeBe constantly greeting the stream of fellow fans that walk past. “There’s the requirement that it’s transparent and with the participation of the club: that it’s democratic. If that doesn’t happen, then I am against it and would prefer to stay in the sixth division,” says Sebastian definitively, “I think the fan scene is self-aware enough now, and powerful enough, I’d say, that we could say that we have conditions. We’re not running after everyone that has money.” Carsten agrees. “I don’t want that any more. If we stay here for three or five years but can hold on to what we have and have fun too, and we have players who realise who they are playing for, that’d be great. It’s nothing to do with what league we’re in, I have nothing against professional football or anything, but we don’t need it and it’s not what TeBe is about.” When one looks back over the last seven years, one can understand why the fans feel so strongly about retaining the status quo. Attendances fell from an average of around 4,000 during the 2. Bundesliga games to today’s 300 or so, making it a great deal easier for the core group of TeBe fans to steer the club’s philosophy in the direction that they feel it belongs. Carsten is aware that it is the size of the fanbase that allows this. “We accuse other [fan groups of opposing teams] of not isolating fascists,” he says, “but it is easier for us to do it. We have more control, more of an overview.” As far as Christian is concerned, every TeBe fan has the responsibility of upholding their beliefs. “Everyone pays attention. We don’t ignore the things we don’t like,” he explains. “Someone will always say, hey, that’s not what we want here.” What the fans don’t want is very simple. In the Mommsenstadion, there is no place for fascism, homophobia, racism or sexism. Christian is wearing a purple “Fußballfans gegen Homophobie” (football fans against homophobia) t-shirt, an initiative of some TeBe fans and the Lesben- und Schwulenverband Berlin-Brandenburg (LSVD) who travel to football games around Europe with anti-homophobia banners in an effort to reduce intolerance in football. ‘Tennis Queerussia’ shouts one of the regular stadium banners in rainbow colours, as it sits beside a variety of anti-fascist, gay pride and Star of David flags. Such movements are relatively common in German football, from the working-class liberal anarchists at St. Pauli to the somewhat more extreme Roter Stern teams, who go as far as to argue that the nationalism inherent in supporting the German national team has no place in their fan scene. Comparing the varying philosophies, however, serves only to degrade their respective importance, and displays a fundamental ignorance of the origins of the teams. TeBe, often labelled as ‘sell-outs’ or the ‘St. Pauli-lite’ by begrudgers, come from an entirely different world to their friends in Hamburg. St. Pauli has always been a working-class district, in stark
contract to the well-to-do Charlottenburg area where TeBe are based – St. Pauli football club is much more an organ of the local community than any other team in Germany, and in that sense is fully deserving of its cult status. The Roter Stern movement, the most notable of which is Roter Stern Leipzig (who, along with a group of TeBe fans, arranged a friendly between the two teams this summer, which ended in a 2-1 victory for the Berlin side) is a relatively new development in German football, which, of course, results in naysayers mocking it for its lack of history. The discussion ignores what these people are fundamentally about. “As long as certain essentials that are important to us are respected ... we all just want to stand on the terrace and drink beer,” says Carsten. These football fans simply want their terrace to also contain the basic fundamental values that we accept as a given in our society. We may never achieve a world free from intolerance, but every Saturday afternoon, these fans meet to simply have fun in their own little slice of utopia, carved from tolerance, openness, and no small amount of beer. Andreas Voigt doesn’t necessarily have such a romantic view of the future. He speaks hopefully of seeing TeBe back where they belong, in the second or third division, and has a plan about how to achieve it. Unlike his predecessors, however, his projection of success involves a slow but solid development based on secure foundations, and, most importantly, no reliance upon one single sponsor. “What we lost sight of in the last decade was to build up a big sponsor pool from many smaller sponsors,” he says earnestly, clearly having learned from the mistakes of his predecessors. “If you have 50 or 100 small sponsors, it’s not so bad if three or four break it off - we could find three or four new ones. But if one big sponsor stops and you don’t have this base [of smaller sponsors], then there’s the danger that the club could finish totally.” His idea is sound in theory, but the practice is somewhat different. TeBe, as one of Germany’s so-called Traditionsvereinen, never had a problem attracting one large sponsor due to the combination of its famous name, solid infrastructure and loyal fan base. When it comes to finding smaller sponsors, however, TeBe suffers from being based in a large city like Berlin. Here, there are so many sports teams that the competition is fierce, and a sixth division football team, Traditionsverein or not, finds it hard to compete with ice hockey, basketball, and the plethora of other sports that can be more rewarding to small sponsors than football. This means that Berlin-based teams are at a disadvantage when compared to teams at a similar level based in smaller towns. “Take for example Rathenow,” expounds Voigt, speaking of a town 80km west of Berlin with some 26,000 inhabitants, “Optik Rathenow are the only sports team there so obviously the local Sparkasse is going to sponsor them, and the same goes for the car dealer, energy providers, butchers and bakers and everything that’s there.” TeBe don’t have such a wealth
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TeBe of options, and suffer accordingly. The ongoing insolvency process also hinders the search for sponsors. Voigt expects it to conclude in autumn, but warns against the expectation that this will result in an instantaneous upturn in the club’s fortunes. “Many think that that automatically means that there’ll be more money but there won’t,” he laughs, “because you have to be just as careful with the money as during the process. The talks with sponsors will be easier. Many of them are frightened away by the knowledge that we’re in an insolvency process.” The end of the process will also allow Voigt to concentrate more on the sporting side of the club. Up to two weeks before the beginning of the new season, the TeBe official website indicated only ten players in the first team, and Voigt is upfront about the difficulties they have not just recruiting players, but retaining their promising youngsters. The TeBe youth development set-up is renowned for producing excellent young players (Bayern Munich and Germany central defender Jerome Boateng played with the TeBe youth teams until snapped up by Hertha aged 13), and compete at the second-highest level of youth competition in Germany. Bizarrely, with the relegation of the first team, the quality of TeBe’s youngsters actually worked to the club’s detriment – not wanting to make their senior starts in the sixth division, the majority of the 2010/11 youth team preferred to move other other, higher-ranked teams in search of the superior level of football that they are capable of. In their stead, a number of former youth teams players, including Alexander Greinert, made their way back to TeBe after unsuccessful stints elsewhere. It obviously wasn’t a question of money for these prodigal sons – TeBe players, according to Voigt, receive a minuscule monthly sum for their services, occasionally ameliorated by win bonuses in the rare case of some extra money being available. Voigt believes that the appointment of former youth team trainer Markus Schatte as the senior trainer last April is one of the reasons that that a number of former TeBe players were attracted back to the club. Schatte worked with many of the returnees over the years, and, seeing their former boss in charge of the youth team, they jumped at the chance to work with trainer whose credentials they are well aware of. The excellent facilities at the Mommenstadion, virtually unchanged since the days of the 2.Bundesliga, are also a big draw. They include a sauna, and the players’ kit is always washed and laid out on matchdays – unheard-of in the sixth division. This, of course, returns us to the financial situation – the much-loved kitman, Frankie Lange, must also be paid for his work. Such a luxury, however, is important as it helps the players realise that playing for TeBe, despite the current restrictions, is an honour, and such an honour is accompanied by benefits for them.
Clearly, every aspect of the running of the club is affected by the lack of funds, but when asked if a certain amount of suspicion arises when large sums of money are on offer, Voigt’s answer is reassuring. “Those thoughts occur immediately. That’s clear. These thoughts occur both for those running the club and the fans, especially with the experiences of the past. We’ve seen it at other clubs too, like at 1860 Munich... someone from the Middle East made it very clear very quickly who had the say. We don’t want that, that could go in completely the wrong direction for us again. Maybe it could lead to short-term success but it’s generally not sustainable.” Like the fans, he does not want the club’s identity to be threatened again. “We would have a problem with selling the club. If the sponsor wanted to decide everything we’d have to think about whether we really want that because we don’t want to sell our philosophy.” However, being actively involved in the day-to-day finances of the club leaves Voigt with a great deal more pragmatism when considering the idea of another large sponsor shovelling money into the club, and he appears to have learned a great deal from the events of the last decade. “What we learned is that when you have a big sponsor, you can’t stop working in the marketing department. If we’re ever in the position that a big sponsor comes and we have some money, we would build up a marketing department. I’d personally make sure that happened very quickly.” Voigt believes that a large sponsor, rather than sending TeBe hurtling up through the divisions again, would simply allow the club to start building a foundation for a slow and steady return to the 2.Bundesliga. And should that one large sponsor decide to abandon the team, this foundation, in the shape of a solid base of many smaller sponsors, would guarantee that the club would not plummet to an all-new low, like what happened when both Göttinger Gruppe and Treasure AG pulled out. So far, Voigt has been in agreement with the fans Carsten, Sebastian and Christian. None are totally opposed to a new, large sponsor, but all would be entirely opposed to it if they demanded control of the club. However, while the fans believe that their participation in the running of the club could continue indefinitely, Voigt is more businesslike. “In the fifth and fourth divisions it’s possible, but from the third division the structures become more professional,” he explains. “My honest personal opinion is that we’d have to be very careful that everything that we build up isn’t thrown away. I know that it’s a difficult balancing act, you just have to be honest about it.” His tone quickly softens, however, perhaps when considering just how far away from professional football TeBe currently are. “But maybe it could run differently, I’d love if it did and we could have that experience and keep everything how it is up to the second division.”
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TeBe One also gets a clear impression from Voigt that, like the fans, a couple of seasons of simple stability, free from promotion and relegation stress, is exactly what the club needs. He’s also been very specific in his downplaying of the team’s chances this year. “We want to consolidate our position. That means avoiding a relegation battle at all costs. I think we’ll fit into the mid-table nicely and it could be that there’s a surprise and we’re further up – if that happens, we’ll take that chance but we’re not going into this season with the goal of promotion because the competition up there is much greater.”
dedication, perseverance and loyalty shown by the Lila-weisse fans. The heady heights of the 2.Bundesliga are currently a long, long way off, but from watching a game at the Mommsenstadion, it’s clear that that doesn’t really matter very much. Even though the team currently lies bottom of the Berlin-
Liga with that easy victory over Preussen looking more and more like a footballing false dawn, the TeBe fans continue to applaud their charges from the field regardless of the result. Things may not be great on the pitch, but on the terraces, TeBe is as healthy as it has ever been.
Stephen Glennon 2011 Images by Ian Stenhouse
The competition of which Voigt speaks is that offered by the second teams of Bundesliga, 2.Bundesliga and 3.Liga teams, squads that he feels badly skew the playing field and leave smaller teams like TeBe or Dynamo with a much smaller chance of success. These teams have such comparatively vast resources that they can effectively decide if they want to get promoted, simply moving quality young players from their first team to their second in order to achieve their goals. This, as well as unfair distribution of DFB funds, is one of the main reasons that smaller teams struggle greatly to keep their heads above water. Even in the 3.Liga, teams rarely have any financial security – TeBe’s neighbours and friends Babelsberg 03 were hours away from insolvency before a last-minute bank guarantee saved them last May, and both Rot-Weiss Ahlen and TuS Koblenz were forcibly relegated from the 3.Liga due after failing to meet required standards of solvency. Below the 2.Bundesliga, there is precious little TV money available and teams are forced to survive with contributions from the fans, sponsorship and a great deal of fiscal prudence. As Voigt and I chat, the club secretary interrupts us briefly with a phone call. When the call is finished, I finish asking Voigt my question, about what TeBe has learned from all the sponsorship crises it has been through. “You can’t really say TeBe like that,” the secretary interjects, “it’s always been different people responsible [over the last fifteen years], so who is TeBe?” It’s an excellent question. One can easily criticise the club for selling out repeatedly, but the fact remains that those who sold out are no longer involved with the club, and at the time, only saw it as a cold, profit-oriented investment. With the club’s financial problems, there are currently very few players or staff who stay at the Mommsenstadion for more than one single season. Here, there is no Alex Ferguson or no Alex Del Piero to embody the spirit of the club as it threatens to be eroded by profit-hungry investors or corrupt directors dragging the club’s name through the mud. Therefore, that responsibility falls to the fans. People like Carsten are the only mainstay that this club has had during its turbulent recent history, and while the fan scene’s holierthan-thou attitude towards other fans less concerned with bringing politics in the shape of a liberal ideal onto the terraces occasionally grates, one can’t help but respect and admire the
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Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark 12.08.11 T端rkiyemspor - FC Anker Wismar 2-1
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Berlin Referees Images by Ian Stenhouse
The referee used to share his uniform only with those equally-loved folk, the undertakers and the traffic wardens. There is a popular rumour that they only started wearing other colours because the beautiful alliteration of “Who’s the bastard in the black” didn’t scan from the stands when they wore yellow or purple. Of course, like everything else in football, it was more about letting the players wear the coolest colour so that the clubs could sell more shirts. It’s a shame in many ways. Black suits them, and their singularly thankless profession. Johnny Cash sang “But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back, Up front there ought to be a man in black”. It was as a penance that he wore that colour on his shoulders. It was as a penance that the referees had to wear it too. They are the forgotten ones, trying to impose order on a chaotic world, with the support of no-one and the love and respect of even fewer. There will always be a minimum of fifty percent of people who think that the referee has done a bad job in every game and, despite the fact that everybody seems so sure that they could do it so much better, they are never willing to get into the ring themselves. When Gerald Bothe donned his shirt to officiate the Berlin Landesliga fixture between Medizin Friedrichshain and TSV Helgoland he didn’t expect to end the day in hospital after a horrific attack. But after he had flashed a second yellow card to a TSV player in the 85th minute (as the teams were level at 3-3) everything changed. This was no longer just a game. Bothe was punched to the ground. He was lucky that the appropriately named Medizin had a medic playing for them that day who, it is acknowledged, saved the referee’s life. He swallowed his tongue when he hit the deck. Bothe ended up returning to hospital after being initially discharged with bleeding on the brain. It was, to use a footballing analogy, touch and go for a while. There are over a thousand referees, men and women, registered in Berlin at this time. Week in, week out (and, to quote the great man again) they walk the line. They have the shittiest job of all, but without them there would be no game. No-one ever paid money to see anarchy on the pitch. These photographs are dedicated to all of them.
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Oberliga Nord LFC Berlin- T端rkiyemspor 3-3 24.09.11
Kreisliga C SK T端rkyurt II- RW Viktoria-Mitte 08 1-8 18.09.11
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Kreisliga A SV Berliner Brauereien - BAK07 II 2-1 11.09.11
BerlinLiga TeBe - Berliner SC 1-5 20.08.11
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Kreisliga C RW Viktoria-Mitte 08 - Fortuna Pankow ll 11 - 0 23.10.11
Kreisliga C RW Viktoria-Mitte 08 - WFC Corso/Vineta II 10-1 28.08.11
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