New stadia versus old stadia

[ursus arctos]

New stadia versus old stadia

It would be better for them in the long run.

Trying to compete with Bayern is a road to ruin. They would be better off modelling themselves on Union Berlin.

[Flynnie]

New stadia versus old stadia

The existence of the Gruenwalder brings up an interesting and very cool point about German club grounds: they don't seem to ever get rid of them.

Bayern have their current stadium, the Olympic Stadium, and Gruenwalder all in existence (the same is obviously true for 1860). Schalke's Parkstadion is their training ground, with part of the grandstand still there, and Gleukauf-Kampfbahn is still around too. BVB have Roete Erde, which is almost 90 years old. Boekelberg is the only ground I can think of that isn't still there, and even then the housing development that replaced it preserved the grandstand and the terraces, so if you cleared out the houses...

Municipal ownership and the necessity of a home for the second team playing in the German football pyramid contributes, but I've still never seen that kind of preservation anywhere else.

[ursus arctos]

New stadia versus old stadia

Other exceptions would be the clubs who completely redeveloped/rebuilt on site, including Eintracht Frankfurt, 1.FC Koln and Leipzig (the changes in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Nuremberg weren't as drastic, and I'm not sure about Hannover).

I really like the old stadium becomes reserve or training ground thing. It helps preserve the history and traditions of the club.

[Flynnie]

New stadia versus old stadia

It's a lazy Friday so I've been looking all that up.

Hannover have redeveloped their current home a few times, but the stadium they left in *1959* is still there, looking basically the same, the home of their reserve side.

Eintract have an association with a ground built in 1920 (not their current one). Englischer Wiki says it only hosted their U23, German Wiki (with my shaky German) seems to think their first team played there.

Hamburg have played on the same site for a long time, but their original home at the turn of the century is still used for sport (Rothembau, by where they play the tennis) and St. Pauli's reserves play at a turn of the century football ground which looks exactly the same, right down to people standing beside the main grandstand on the ground, divided from the pitch by a rope.

It's really, really cool.

[ursus arctos]

New stadia versus old stadia

The first team did play at the Stadion an der Riederwald (which was also used by the athletics and other sections of the multi-sport club).

It looked like this:

[Incandenza]

New stadia versus old stadia

Can you explain more about 1860 and why the Allianz has been bad for them? Are they responsible for sharing stadium costs?

[ursus arctos]

New stadia versus old stadia

The stadium was built by a company that was equally owned by Bayern and 1860, but had 1860's president Wildmoser as CEO.

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that Wildmoser's support for that arrangement was tied to his ability to skim funds from the construction contracts. Both he and his son were charged and though the father pled out (a deal that included him resigning from 1860), his son was convicted and did time.

1860 could never afford their share of the running costs, and ultimately sold their share of the operating company to Bayern for 11 million euro in a deal that 1860 claimed saved it from bankruptcy.

Wagner could have written an opera about Sechzig and the Poisoned Chalice.

[Stumpy Pepys]

New stadia versus old stadia

It's also bad for them because they've never been able to fill it (despite fans never tiring of telling you what a big club they are).

Some of their recent crowds have been shocking; as low as 13,000 (the Allianz Arena holds about 70,000).

[ursus arctos]

New stadia versus old stadia

Indeed, that has always been the core of the problem.

If they could have filled it, they could have recovered from the Wildmoser fraud, but as that was never going to happen, they just got themselves deeper into a hole each year.

Bayern also must have known that the chances of all this happening were quite high, and that they would ultimately be able to get the whole thing for a relative song.