Saw this on Football Focus yesterday; best football story for a very long time, certainly
the way I'd like to see QPR go for sure:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/50267677
Yesterday Union Berlin beat Hertha Berlin 1-0 and guess who scored the winning goal...
one Sebastian Polter who I think would have done well in our present setup.
Union Berlin
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Andy_N19
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Union Berlin
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Satch
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Re: Union Berlin
They’re a great club. Watched the game yesterday with a few of their fans who’d also come to watch us first (on TV here in NY)
Delighted for Polter, he also scored a pen at Bayern last week (they’d already missed one, could have been the equalizer)
There are some interesting articles out there about how their fans have donated blood to raise funds and helped build the stadium themselves. The scenes after they won their playoff last year were incredible.
Delighted for Polter, he also scored a pen at Bayern last week (they’d already missed one, could have been the equalizer)
There are some interesting articles out there about how their fans have donated blood to raise funds and helped build the stadium themselves. The scenes after they won their playoff last year were incredible.
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dm
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Re: Union Berlin
There aren't many overseas clubs I'd travel to visit but Union Berlin is one I would go see.
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deadendjob
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dm
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Re: Union Berlin
Yes, good shout dej. They would be an interesting club to visit too.
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Giorgio
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Re: Union Berlin
...I know some guys living in Berlin and they told me that Union is indeed the club of Berlin...not Herta...
and about St.Pauli...similar stuff in Hamburg.....they are considered a tough club...and in Munich....
1860 is considered the historical club...more than the rich Bayern
and about St.Pauli...similar stuff in Hamburg.....they are considered a tough club...and in Munich....
1860 is considered the historical club...more than the rich Bayern
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Andy_N19
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Re: Union Berlin
There are quite a few who deserve note, Boca Juniors when I first visited were very community oriented, the evening I passed the
Bombonera there were ladies going to yoga and exercise classes there which I found highly commendable.
Boca traditionally the working class; River Plate traditionally middle and upper class support, obviously blurred lines of support now.
St Pauli I'd go along with, Forest Green Rovers for their green credentials.
There are a couple of Uruguayan clubs outside of Peñarol and Nacional who do good work.
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offamushinshepherdsbush
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Re: Union Berlin
Nice piece on the BFG here, hope his success continues 
https://www.theguardian.com/football/bl ... bundesliga
It was going to take something to be heard through the cacophony, to guide the way through the fog that sporadically impaired vision of proceedings, and to cut a tension that was quite unusual in the context of Berlin’s football. In a global city where football doesn’t often take centre stage, it needed something or someone to seize the moment. Sebastian Polter was ready.
In this first top-flight meeting between Berlin’s two most prominent clubs, Union and Hertha, where nerves crackled and fireworks fizzed, the football had been fractious in the Bundesliga new boys’ atmospheric, old-school home, rebuilt by the club’s supporters and still harbouring a manual scoreboard in a corner.
From the moment the 28-year-old Polter came on to replace Sebastian Andersson for the last 15 minutes, leaning into the field in anticipation as he waited for his chance, he was determined to make this his moment. “He’s not afraid of anything,” Union’s chief spokesman, Christian Arbeit, told the Guardian after the game, smiling. “He’s the type of guy that wants to carry the world on his shoulders.”
It must have felt like he was doing just that after the referee Denis Aytekin awarded Union an 87th-minute penalty for Dedryck Boyata’s challenge on Christian Gentner. Aytekin went over to check the video monitor, and all through the delay Polter remained on the spot, cradling the ball, alone with his thoughts. When Aytekin did give the go-ahead, he put the ball down and nervelessly smashed the winner into the top corner.
It is the current apex of a nascent season which has astonished at every turn. Even if Union’s plans continue to be undeniably ambitious, with developing their facilities and their academy in the works, dreaming of these moments and living them are two different states entirely. Their first season in the elite has been a long string of pinch-yourself pinnacles, one after the other – the overwhelming emotion of the opening-day meeting with Leipzig, with fans bringing and brandishing images of late relatives who supported the club, the improbable first win against Dortmund, and making life tough for Bayern in Munich the previous week. And now this.
Arbeit had talked in the days before the game about his pride in the derby being chosen as the weekend’s Top-Spiel, occupying the 6.30pm local time slot. It was always for the occasion, not the craft of the football, and what unfolded conformed exactly to type. Union hit the goal frame in the first three minutes, when Christopher Lenz headed Andersson’s right-wing cross against a post, but it was the exception rather than the rule, and the best chance for either side before Polter got his opportunity late on. That he took it was Union’s reward for showing the desire to chase the win rather than just observe the occasion. Hertha, their legs heavy from 120 minutes of Pokal football in front of a full house against Dynamo Dresden in the week, seemed to have little left to give, despite their superior pedigree, though Boyata insisted afterwards that it was “no excuse” for the performance. “We just didn’t play well,” the defender admitted.
Getting off the tram at Alten Försterei and turning the corner to the stadium’s front, hours before kick-off, it was tempting to wonder how Union would deal with the occasion of a top-level, equal-status meeting with a club that, until reunification in 1990, had played in a different national league to them. The opening day had been hard to handle. “I guess that for the players on the pitch, it was all too much,” Arbeit said of their 4-0 defeat by an admittedly excellent Leipzig.
This time they were ready, despite the frequency of the flares and rockets, despite the two stoppages at the beginning of the second half, delaying the game by six minutes as the pyro escalated and the smoke snaked over the pitch, obscuring the players in a wispy fog.
At the end, some fans in the away section fired lit rockets at Union’s celebrating players, and into home sections of the stadium. Polter later discovered that his watching girlfriend and two children, sat in the main stand, were narrowly missed by one of those rockets. “I think pyro has its place in a city derby,” he said afterwards, “but it has to be ensured that nobody is injured.”
Anger rose and a handful of masked, black-clad ultras scaled the home fences and on to the pitch, to be turned back by their own players, led by their firm-minded goalkeeper Rafal Gikiewicz. Nothing was going to spoil this historic day for Union, but they aren’t just in the Bundesliga to enjoy the scenery.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/bl ... bundesliga
It was going to take something to be heard through the cacophony, to guide the way through the fog that sporadically impaired vision of proceedings, and to cut a tension that was quite unusual in the context of Berlin’s football. In a global city where football doesn’t often take centre stage, it needed something or someone to seize the moment. Sebastian Polter was ready.
In this first top-flight meeting between Berlin’s two most prominent clubs, Union and Hertha, where nerves crackled and fireworks fizzed, the football had been fractious in the Bundesliga new boys’ atmospheric, old-school home, rebuilt by the club’s supporters and still harbouring a manual scoreboard in a corner.
From the moment the 28-year-old Polter came on to replace Sebastian Andersson for the last 15 minutes, leaning into the field in anticipation as he waited for his chance, he was determined to make this his moment. “He’s not afraid of anything,” Union’s chief spokesman, Christian Arbeit, told the Guardian after the game, smiling. “He’s the type of guy that wants to carry the world on his shoulders.”
It must have felt like he was doing just that after the referee Denis Aytekin awarded Union an 87th-minute penalty for Dedryck Boyata’s challenge on Christian Gentner. Aytekin went over to check the video monitor, and all through the delay Polter remained on the spot, cradling the ball, alone with his thoughts. When Aytekin did give the go-ahead, he put the ball down and nervelessly smashed the winner into the top corner.
It is the current apex of a nascent season which has astonished at every turn. Even if Union’s plans continue to be undeniably ambitious, with developing their facilities and their academy in the works, dreaming of these moments and living them are two different states entirely. Their first season in the elite has been a long string of pinch-yourself pinnacles, one after the other – the overwhelming emotion of the opening-day meeting with Leipzig, with fans bringing and brandishing images of late relatives who supported the club, the improbable first win against Dortmund, and making life tough for Bayern in Munich the previous week. And now this.
Arbeit had talked in the days before the game about his pride in the derby being chosen as the weekend’s Top-Spiel, occupying the 6.30pm local time slot. It was always for the occasion, not the craft of the football, and what unfolded conformed exactly to type. Union hit the goal frame in the first three minutes, when Christopher Lenz headed Andersson’s right-wing cross against a post, but it was the exception rather than the rule, and the best chance for either side before Polter got his opportunity late on. That he took it was Union’s reward for showing the desire to chase the win rather than just observe the occasion. Hertha, their legs heavy from 120 minutes of Pokal football in front of a full house against Dynamo Dresden in the week, seemed to have little left to give, despite their superior pedigree, though Boyata insisted afterwards that it was “no excuse” for the performance. “We just didn’t play well,” the defender admitted.
Getting off the tram at Alten Försterei and turning the corner to the stadium’s front, hours before kick-off, it was tempting to wonder how Union would deal with the occasion of a top-level, equal-status meeting with a club that, until reunification in 1990, had played in a different national league to them. The opening day had been hard to handle. “I guess that for the players on the pitch, it was all too much,” Arbeit said of their 4-0 defeat by an admittedly excellent Leipzig.
This time they were ready, despite the frequency of the flares and rockets, despite the two stoppages at the beginning of the second half, delaying the game by six minutes as the pyro escalated and the smoke snaked over the pitch, obscuring the players in a wispy fog.
At the end, some fans in the away section fired lit rockets at Union’s celebrating players, and into home sections of the stadium. Polter later discovered that his watching girlfriend and two children, sat in the main stand, were narrowly missed by one of those rockets. “I think pyro has its place in a city derby,” he said afterwards, “but it has to be ensured that nobody is injured.”
Anger rose and a handful of masked, black-clad ultras scaled the home fences and on to the pitch, to be turned back by their own players, led by their firm-minded goalkeeper Rafal Gikiewicz. Nothing was going to spoil this historic day for Union, but they aren’t just in the Bundesliga to enjoy the scenery.
“Give me a ----ing player. A good player.”
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Giorgio
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Re: Union Berlin
..here it is..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxUojzAvdLk
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Satch
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Re: Union Berlin
They also beat top of the table Borussia Monchengladbach yesterday 2-0 and were only a missed pen away from a draw at Bayern a few weeks ago (Polter scored a late one, but Seb Anderson, who i'd love to see in a QPR shirt had already missed one)