Sunday, August 21, 2005

Hamburg Kicking Kickers

Yesturday we rocked over to an opening pokal game between the Stuttgart Kickers and Hamburg pieces of crap ;-) For those of you who don't know, the German Soccer Pokal tournament is a tournament featuring all teams from first second and third leagues as well as some regional team champions etc all competing against each other. The excitement of course is when these big first league teams come and play regional third and fourth league teams and sometimes lose! So these games tend to be very exciting for the home team even if they lose because they get a chance to see superstars play in their small villages. It's the most exciting soccer of the year and inevitably at least one team loses to a shitty third or fourth league team (this year Cologne actually lost in the first round!). So we headed to the game with hopes of a Kickers upset win, of course we had to stop by CBP first (happy birthday Kristina!) and then off to the game in style ;-)



Some of us got to the game a little early... well maybe in perfect time as we could sit with the locals and enjoy a beverage:



Gametime, Go Kickers!



One minute before halftime Kickers tied up the game with a penalty kick! One-one going into the second half!



Unfortunatly despite a strong start to the second half, Hamburg got a cheap deflection goal which broke the back of the Kickers. They then got some late goals, including a clear dive penalty shot ;-) to finalize the game at 5-1. Despite the score the game was extremely exciting. Here the locals chear their Kicker players after the game:



Good times:



Our token Hamburg fan, Karlsruhe Kris somehow mistakenly got the times mixed up and showed up late. Despite a plethora of calls and sms's (which did not go through apparently) and a halftime run around the stadium to try and find him, we were unable to hook up until after the game. Needless to say he was one happy camper:



Today is the third day of pokal so I'm off to watch my VFB Stuttgart team crush some local nobodies ;-)