“This is about showing the rest of the world a vision of what football can be like when it’s driven by the fans.”

Although talking about football has seemed rather frivolous in recent times, it’s important to note that the game finds itself in a precarious position and German football is no different.

Listening to the The Athletic’s Steilcast podcast in March there was a discussion on whether the Coronavirus ‘could threaten the identity of German football as we know it.’

DW’s Jonathan Harding suggested that the break in play could make way for discussions on drastic changes to the financial model with some clubs on the verge of an economic crisis.

His point centred on Germany’s revered 50+1 model - a rule which maintains the fans majority voting rights at respective clubs. 

Its sustainability, up until now, has ensured fan power and representation and is the basis for the country’s unique footballing landscape and identity where tickets are affordable, beer is cheap and rights are recognised.

A potential shift away from this would leave German football unrecognisable.

The 50+1, as Harding put it, “is ultimately what sets Germany apart.”

It goes a long way to expressing the strength of feeling of German football fans towards their model and, in fact, their way of life.

Their model and culture means clubs are not reliant on the generosity of wealthy owners and are somewhat independent. 

The model in English football treats fans as customers, there is no power for the fan.

German football expert Ryland James suggested to the BBC that, in the mind of owners, “if one group won’t pay, then they find people that will.”

In Germany, the fans are very much part of the club - they are invested in the decisions that their club makes and have a voice.

The clubs understand that they serve the community and that fans are an integral part of the day to day running.

In our own discussion Harding put it to me that, as a result, their identity is a natural bi-product of the relationship between a community that the football team serves and the football team itself. 

It is the basis from which German clubs work off and the 50+1 rule remains integral to that identity.

History’s importance in identity:

On a much deeper level, the identity of a football club in Germany relies heavily on its own relevance to the community and its connection with both the here and now as well as its past. 

English journalist Jacob Sweetman moved to Berlin roughly 15 years ago and found football as a gateway to understanding the German attitude towards life itself as well as the ‘beautiful game.’  

Having delved into the country’s history, a new understanding was formed of German football’s place in society today and it’s positon in the wider context.

“For me, it’s impossible to look at anything in Modern Germany without looking at what’s happened to this country post Second World War,” he said.

“There has been so much that has happened in this country: the divide post war into East and West Germany, the Communist state and the Capitalist state and then what happened after the fall of the wall and the reunification. There is still big divides in Germany as we speak.

“All of this turbulence in life has meant people have always wanted something to hold onto.

“The Bundesliga was the last major league in Europe to be professionalised and it was professionalised by clubs like 1. FC Nürnberg - who are still called ‘Der Club’ and that sense of history is felt across the board.

“These old traditional clubs like FC Schalke 04, 1.FC Köln and Eintracht Frankfurt, for example, have always been there.

“I think that represents a certain idea of stability in a country where things were always uncertain, constantly changing and in a state of flux. “

As Sweetman explained to me, clubs in Germany always stick by their clubs even if they are not necessarily successful.

The one common thread that runs throughout the history of most former East German football clubs in particular is a lack of success post the collapse of Communism. To this very day, clubs of the west still hold the precedence in terms of finance and in terms of infrastructure. Big former East German clubs such as 1.FC Magdeburg and Dynamo Dresden continue to languish in 2. Bundesliga.

Financially speaking, they are where they should be in, but in terms of stature, scale and tradition there is an argument to suggest that they should be established Bundesliga clubs. 

Despite mediocrity on the pitch, these clubs have maintained superbly, just like the majority in Germany, what they have always have had - their identity.

On Dresden in particular, Sweetman explained: “Dresden will revel in the fact that they have 40,000 people going to a game even if they ended up in the third division.”

“In 1945, Dresden was famously burnt to the ground in one night by the RAF and USAF. Tens of thousands people died on one night alone and yet it was previously the most beautiful city in Europe. They called it the Florence of the North and then it was destroyed.

“With that in mind, you always look to something positive to represent you that was always there – no matter if they were always bad. Perhaps it’s even better because at least you know what is still going on.

“It’s something to cling on to in a lot of Germany and I think it goes to the very heart of the universal despise of clubs such as RB Leipzig who have somewhat flouted the 50+1 rule in the country.

“It’s the idea of just picking something up, creating a new and winning with it – it is somehow against the way everything has always been done. “

“In Germany, they take these old fashioned ideas very seriously.”

1.FC Union Berlin

For the last thirteen years, Sweetman has followed the former East German, now Bundesliga outfit, 1.FC Union Berlin from the country’s Regionalliga (fourth division) to the Bundesliga.

The club perhaps embodies more than any other German side the importance and relevance of the 50+1 in terms of fan involvement, representation of localised identity and the values of its community.

German football magazine 11 Freude described them as being ‘successful in steering a path between commercialism and staying close to their fans.’

As of 2020, the club was only one of five Bundesliga clubs who had not outsourced their professional football operations and essentially remain 100% ‘in-house.’

They show, as Sweetman described to the BBC: “a vision of what football can be like when it’s driven by the fans.”

Sweetman told me: “Union will always sell themselves as being different.

“Over the years I witnessed the fans build the club’s stadium from the ground up and it was incredible to see these people literally do all this for their own football club which is something that I’ve seen missing a lot in the football world, particularly in England now days.”

1.FC Union are based in Köpenick, a suburb of Berlin and they are characterised for ‘being different.’

The club’s routes go back to Oberschöneweide – an area about half a mile down the road from Köpenick – and it remains a fundamental part of their identity today.

“Oberschöneweide, during the industrial revolution, was on the banks of the river and that’s where Union Oberschöneweide was formed as a football club,” Sweetman told me.

“They (the fans) call themselves the Schlosserjungs (sons of hand workers).

“When they built the new stand (the Haupttribüne) at the stadium, they made it out of yellow brick because that’s what all the factories along the side of the river in Oberschöneweide were built out of and their stadium reflected their identity.

“At a game a few years ago, all of the away Union fans wore blue dungarees overalls that are worn by factory workers here. It was to say we are the sons of the working class workers of Oberschöneweide and this is fundamental to understanding the way they see themselves in the modern world.

“The factories after the fall of the wall were all closed down.

“It was a classic tale of post-industrial economic meltdown, but they saw that very literally in the place that they had come out and they saw exactly the same in the fortunes of their football club.”

As with the other aforementioned East German clubs, the collapse of the Berlin wall left 1.FC Union faced with literal extinction.

Their rise back to the top of the game was heralded by the German media with the well documented stories regarding the money raised by fans through blood donations and the rebuild of the stadium via free fan labour which attracted attention for all the right reasons.

After years spent in Germany’s 2. Bundesliga, the former East Berlin club were promoted to the Bundesliga via a play-off against VfB Stuttgart at the end of the 2018/19 season.

“The fact that Union had reached the Bundesliga after everything they had been through was remarkable,” Sweetman recollected. 

“It wasn’t about playing in the Bundesliga, it was not about the English idea of getting to the Premier League and the greatest hope being to finish 16^th.

“Here, it wasn’t about that.

“It was about having achieved something, despite everything. “

Union Berlin, and indeed German football for that matter, is still far from perfect.

Bundesliga sides are multi-million pounds outfits, even if only partially as a result of the 50+1 rule, as ultimately there is money in modernising these traditions.

1.FC Union themselves are not exempt from the realities, pressures and temptations that the top division brings.

The club continues to voice its plans to increase their stadium capacity to up to 40,000, creating what would be the largest standing capacity of any football stadium in Germany, including Borussia Dortmund.

“Within 15 years to expect to average 40,000 is a gamble at best, hubristic at worst,” Sweetman explained to me.

“It’s dangerously close to believing your own hype. It kind of goes against them being this provincial club rooted in the working class and all these legends they tell about themselves.

“All of this changes if you are going to be in a 40,000 seater stadium, but it’s partly about maximising what they can.

“With the myths around it as well, to build this incredible all standing palace to what they deem to be traditional football values is a beautiful idea, but I worry it’s a step too far.”

Despite this, what 1.FC Union does represent is that German clubs recognise their strength isn’t in their financial power and their success on the global stage.

Instead, as Sweetman put it to me: “It’s about their packed stadiums, their identity and being true to themselves in their own perceived values. “

So what can English football learn from these examples?

As with anything, context has to be accounted for. 

Unlike Germany, the Premier League have sown the seeds for the football landscape we see today. Some may well be very hard to undo.

From Sweetman’s perceptive, however, this doesn’t necessarily mean that commonality in voice cannot be achieved. 

He said: “What fans of English clubs need to do is they need to realise who pays their bills and to whom they are beholden.

“Football is a game viewed within stadiums primarily and not watched on TV and this is what German teams and football fan culture does better than anywhere else in my opinion.

“Even though there is a Monday night game, where protests are still rife, you still get the majority of games kicking off in the Bundesliga at 3:30 on a Saturday.

“It’s a country very rooted in tradition, they don’t like change. And that has actually worked quite well for them and for the German football fans to an extent.

“Football fans, however, are also incredibly strong, here they discuss things as fan groups and that’s the kind of thing that seems to be lost in England.”

Sweetman exemplified the situation at Brighton & Hove Albion in 1997 as an example of what English football fans can do for each other when they come together.

Following a spell of financial mismanagement, the then fourth division club were on the brink of relegation out of the Football League and held a fan united day encouraging fans from across the country to come and support the team and raise money. 

On the day, the majority of fans went in their own team colours to watch Brighton’s match against Hartlepool in the international break to get as much money in the pot as possible.

Many Brighton fans accredit the event as a major factor in the clubs survival against financial plight. It was a show of character from a large number of English football fans.

“That sort of thing is very important and that’s not what I see enough of looking in at England anymore these days,” Sweetman said.

“Many football fans of say Championship teams are solely focused on their own ambitions to get to the Premier League, finish 16^th, get more money and gain a bigger status.

“In England we need to reassess our position as fans.

“Unfortunately, we are all too happy to sell ourselves out to the highest bidder. Some clubs are so desperate to get rid of their owners that they would jump into bed with anyone that comes along as success in the Premier League is worth everything.

“Here (in Germany) the fans themselves, which is not necessarily reflected on a club by club basis, but the fans themselves here stick together and they still all seem to see what is more important.

“What I would like to see in England is for the fans to actually unify to defend what they bring.

“English clubs are followed magnificently throughout their four divisions – more so in Germany.

“There are things that they do very well, but they are allowing themselves to be exploited.”

Norwich’s City’s approach to the Premier League, for example, has been refreshing.

With trusted local owners at the helm and an open line of communication with fans, they represent an example of a club that has maintained a level of clarity regarding expectations of success even at the highest level.

Although Sweetman, a boyhood fan of rivals Ipswich Town, concedes that the Canaries sensible approach to the Premier League is ‘laudable’, they remain an anomaly among English clubs.

He said: “This dream of success at all costs means it’s very fertile ground for whoever comes in and buys a failing club.

“If you make all these outlandish promises of success, then the fans will welcome you in with open arms and you’re are not going to have your own identity.

“It comes back to this point of what they do here in Germany very well. Here they know their own worth in what they have and that’s what seems to have been lost in England.

“Football is not necessarily about success in and of itself, it’s about everything else around it.”

And in the current climate, perhaps English football would do well to learn from their German counterparts and realise this again.