I recently completed ten years service at my current place of employment. One of the good things about the place is that while there are the obvious arrivals and departures in the staff, many stick around for a number of years, and so there is a wealth of experience in not only my department, but all around the company.
Which means that most know my habits when it comes to football. They know, for example, that I will sometimes disappear into Europe for a weekend to take in a game or three. Even when the primary reason for the trip has nothing to do with football, I will try to find a game to get to. Somehow, and despite the fact that this has happened before, when I casually announced that I was off to Germany for a game, the first question was for how long I would be gone.
About twenty-eight hours or so was the reply, which bought on looks of surprise, and why on earth would you travel all that way for one game. Then I was asked what my flight times were. On that occasion, it was literally a day trip, as we left early on the Saturday and we were back in Blighty about twenty or so hours later. With Dagenham Dan proving to be a bit of a whiz when it comes to arranging tickets for our European jaunts, he was left to sort those out, while Neil booked the train, and arranged our overnight stay.
As for me, I just sat back, and paid whatever it cost me to go along on the trip. In his excellent history of German football Tor! From to , the club won the Bundesliga on five occasions, won the German Cup in , and also won two UEFA Cup finals, as well as losing to Liverpool in two other finals, which included the European Cup final.
With teams containing Bertie Vogts, Gunter Netzer and later Allan Simonsen eventually of Charlton Athletic , Borussia were seen as an attractive side to follow, becoming many peoples second team. In the book, Hesse even likens the two clubs to the Star Wars film, portraying Gladbach as the good guys, while Bayern were the evil empire, although on the pitch, the empire won. Their opponents today are Sport Club Frieburg, who are just a point and three places behind. Last weekend they lost at home to the champions, Borussia Dortmund Gladbach though, were able to come back from two goals down away to Hannover to win After watching the highlights on ITV4 last Monday night, I am hoping that the snow is not going to be a feature this weekend.
