Matchday 19: Eintracht Braunschweig – FC Sankt Pauli 1-2!

Up yours EBS!!!

Just look at their sorry asses! This is how defeat looks like! Of course somone could aptly observe that this look reminds us the look of the Boys in Brown after full time during the majority of the season so far but this is not the issue here 😀 The issue here is that the (already considered doomed by almost anybody except us, the fans) Boys in Brown made a first class funeral for the ambitious and always disgusting Braunschweig, precipitating these bastards from the top and taking the breath of air that we were so hardly gasping for! Priceless victory, priceless trip, remains only to be seen if squad has more like this in store 🙂

 

On the way

Appointment set for 9:00 am at Altona station. All the good guys there, the usual routine of saying hello to people haven’t seen for a while (Hey Yorkshire, this was NOT a good idea, we need a new glass with the face of the Unspeakable on!), last moment ticket exchanges and of we go 9:00 sharp. Train packed both with people and positive vibes which I actually couldn’t tell if they were a result of a pure optimism or a laughing-to-the-face-of death attitude, maybe a little from both 🙂 Bullshit train but short trip (way back was somehow longer) and after exactly 2 hours the brown white mob stepped foot in Braunschweig. Not the prettiest city, not the friendliest environment and LOTS of cops all around, leaving actually very little space for “cultural exchanges” between rival fans.

Their stadium, quite sympathetic actually even though somehow weird with the track & field corridors separating pitch from terraces in an otherwise football stadium. Tight security at the door but not really clever as the friend in front of me managed to pass in a full bottle with a mix of Vitamine C and Thailand Vodka (FFS 😀 😀 😀 ) stuck up his ass while the security guy was examining him in full detail ( 😀 ) Good atmosphere from everybody (hey really: does anybody know why do we have to booo YNWA when played in the speakers of another stadium? 🙂 ) and, after a lot of anticipation, off we go!

The game

Game on with a first chance for EBS on 4′, coming from a 13m shot by Schönfeld who could do really really better than sending the ball to Hell but his body position didn’t really help him. Still safe, game on and 3′ afterwards (7′) THE SHOCK (for EBS 😀 ). Corner from the right for FCSP by Sahin, Lasse Sobiech higher and stronger on the air than everyone and GOAAAAAAAAALLLLLL!!! Insanity in the (already militant) guest block with massive showers of beer and Coke (this fuckin’ thing is actually much worse than beer when it lands on you 😀 ) and scenes of happy chaos which signaled the start of a bloody good support as everybody saw the possibility and went babanas 🙂 This early scored goal actually helped the squad which didn’t massively retreat but kept the balance in a pitch at a satisfactory level during the 1st half. Weak point, our left defensive flank where EBS managed to create a lot of trouble and, if Kumbela wasn’t missing a goal that even a stoned iguana can’t miss, after such a side attack on 20′, things could end up quite different. It didn’t and game went on with FCSP doing much better than the average, holding succesfully our ground and being quite dangerous on the counter attack, like the situation on 40′, with the ball after some fast development going to Park who dribbled anybody on his way before he gets stopped by Fejzic, EBS keeper, last man standing. If we add a couple of shots from EBS and a couple of FCSP free kicks that could have a much better outcome, this summarises the picture for 1st half. Half time whistle, EBS 0 – FCSP 1, and a feeling that everything is possible here as long as we stay focused but without the excessive optimism that turned a lot of times to grief already this season.

Sobiech, 7′, 0-1! (photo: Fishing4)

2nd half under way with, harder game and more pressure from EBS but resulting more in FCSP guys lying (excessively in some occasions, c’mon) down on the pitch and less actual chances. Their first actually notable occasion was on…68′ and was more a result of Park’s wrong estimation (left the ball mistakenly to the back while Nyman was coming with serious intentions) than result of EBS creative play. Nothing happened, Heerwagen cleared the situation and 4′ later…this was fucking something 😀 😀 😀 I can still recall the madness that immediately prevailed as soon as Boland lost Litka’s BRILLIANT BALL and Sahin stormed all alone towards the net, all the hypertension during the 3-4 seconds between the assist and the goal and the explosion that immediately followed as Sahin, having already scored came triumphant to celebrate towards the guest block… 0-2 FCSP on 72′ and this time was looking that is our turn. However nobody was really relaxed despite the 0-2, our bitter experience allowed no one to do so. Run and gun game for the following minutes with FCSP losing a big double chance on 79′, first with Sahin and then with Thy on the rebound from a much more acute angle while the EBS defense was looking really disorganised. Sorry boys but if we keep losing chances like this, sooner or later will pay the price and, under these circumstances, there can be an expensive one… Except a couple of EBS shots, everything was rolling smooth for the Boys in Brown… until injury time. The 7′ minutes that the assistant referee suggested made everybody nervous, even though imho this 7′ weren’t completely unjustified. Squad became really nervous, barricated completely in the back and, even with 2 goals lead, injury time was more full of agony. Instead of taking advantage of EBS suicidal tactics and lock the game, we gave them all the space they needed to turn or box to Hell for the 8′ in total minutes remaining. Eyebrows lifted with Omladic’s lost header on 92′, a Buchtmann lost chance on a 94′ counter attack almost braught back things to normal but, when Abdullahi managed to really score on 96′, everything changed. I can assure you that the closing 2′ minutes of injury time were absolutely chaotic and we came too close to a screw-up that we would probably never recover from, not due to the lost points but mainly due to the way it happened. Fortunately time was too little for EBS and, when the ref decided that he couldn’t leave the play going on for another year and the final whistle sounded, the feeling of relief took me personally a couple years ago back, when Ewald’s squad, already written off by everybody, finished safe, even with a defeat, at Darmstadt 🙂

A “thank you” to the guest block by the Boys in Brown 🙂

OK, this was SOME FCSP! Don’t anybody imagine that we suddenly became a super squad but seems that we were good enough. Weaknesses were there (especially backwards and forwards) but played solidly and smart enough (at least before injury time ^^) to be able to say that this was not about EBS not being good, it was about us not letting them to do their play. Looks like most of the newcomers have fit in, all of them did their part more or less, I was personally impressed with that little demon from Norway, Möller Daehli who remind me a lot of Rzatkowski and has a lot to give along the (hard) way. To the moaning part, I think that we could use a little more football time instead of lying-on-the-pitch time (I repeat, the 7′ injury time that became 8’+ were not too excessive). Of course, under such circumstances and with so much at stake, everything is completely understood, I just miss the times that we didn’t had to do this for anyone 🙂

To get a little back down to earth, pointwise this means nothing more than the fact that we are not dead yet. We’re still at the very bottom of the table and we need a lot more like this. Next challenge already visible, extremely strong this season Dynamo Dresden (escorted of course by their lowlife fanbase) is coming to Millerntor for a game that, due to the nature of the rivalry, would be extremely significant, even if we had more points than we needed. We simply need to crush this bastardhood, get the 3 pts (even though logic says that 1 is not a failure) and then go to play Arminia, do what we have to do and make the first decisive step. Squad behavior in the pitch and reaction after the finish shows that this is not just hope and fiction, we can do this, c’mon FC Sankt Pauli!

Return trip

Simply a state of Euphoria. Spent almost the entire trip, smoking weed into a space next to the bar (basically looking more like a small smoking airport booth), actually the only idiot not consuming booze but having the excellent company of Luke “The Door Controller” and Christian from Yorkshire St. Pauli 🙂 Good funny talk about FCSP, wrestling (!!!) and more serious things like what YSP are up to now. The hot news is that a rematch against FC Lampedusa (let’s not discuss details on last years 10-1 first leg 😀 ) has been setup for the last away Sonderzug weekend. The other thing I kept from this talk is about YSP. The more beautiful thing about this bunch is not all the things they do and everybody knows – is what they do without letting anybody know about it…

Finally home! First Harburg, then Hamburg Hbf and finally Altona. Last sweet memory of the trip, after the lots of goodbyes and auf wiedersehens, the majestic version of “Gehst du durchs Viertel” inside the bus and inside Reeperbahn station by the happy and slightly drunk mob while escorting banners and others precious goodies on the way home 🙂

Line Up:

Heerwagen

Dudziak   L. Sobiech   Hornschuh   Park

Nehrig   Flum

Sobota (Litka 64′)  Möller Daehli (Buchtmann 60′)  Sahin (Neudecker 90′)

Thy

Match goals:

0:1 Sobiech (7′, Header, Sahin)

0:2 Sahin (72′, Left foot shot, Litka)

1-2 Abdullahi (90+6′, Header, Omladic)

Spectators: 22775

Sankt Pauli cards: Sobota(3), Sahin(6), Sobiech(4), Flum(1)

Squad coming to guest block 

Guest block kicking ass!

Further reading:

• Kicker (German)
• Official website (German)
• Official website Photo Gallery
• USP Photo Gallery
• St. Pauli Athens Club (Greek)
• KonBon Magazin (German)
• Magischer FC (German)
• Kleiner Tod (“special” issue, German)

 

The U23 Lübeck heros 🙂

Late Saturday night, I met Carlos at the Jolly door, a fine lad known back from 2014 and the Spring Hoheluft Saturday mornings back then. To my question “are you coming Braunschweig tomorrow” he immediately responded “no, we’re going Lübeck!”. Within the trip panic I had completely missed the U23 away game vs the pig collective of VfB Lübeck, taking place almost same time with the pros. After explaining me what I was missing, he added the two reasons they were going: a) “somebody has to go” and b) “no one wants us there and this is a perfect reason to go” 😀

And they did. 10 (TEN!) wackos escorted our U23 to Lübeck (where the Boys in Brown held their ground with 1-1) to the surprise of everybody, especially the local authorities 🙂 . Pure respect to Carlos, his heavy drinking friend with the beard and the fuckin’ difficult to comprehend name ( 🙂 ) and all the other fine FCSP gentlemen who did this – cheers gents, looking forward to our next Saturday/Sunday morning meeting at the Hoheluft 🙂

The neighborhood

Nothing new this time. Probably the neighborhood references from the last trip cover things just fine – if we would like to do a follow up, I think the following picture sums things up:

The once upon a time excellent and now abandoned Backbord… Bastards…

To be honest, most of free time was spent at a corner of the Jolly, among friends. Thank you Hans & Mahu, Janku & Anna, Till (the ineffective security guy!!!) & Esther, insane bastard Giannis and Kathrin, Martha, Niklas, Simon (for the courier service 😀 ), thank you YSP (although rarely seen 🙂 )  and to all the friends – old and new – that made this a Hell of a trip – see you all again hopefully in May 😉

Last but not least…

https://twitter.com/FCSPAthensScum/status/828702541345128448