Football in Berlin: dance of joy at Tennis Borussia, anger at BFC Dynamo

Plain in Hohenschönhausen: BFC Dynamo stadium in the Sportforum

Photo: imago/Ed Gar

Before the previous Berlin election in spring 2023, CDU mayoral candidate Kai Wegner appeared at the BFC Dynamo in the Sportforum Höhenschönhausen – with a freshly polished bald head – and, in the midst of election campaign fever, announced his support for the expansion of the club’s home stadium into a third division stadium. The project was included in the coalition agreement after his election victory, then nothing happened for a few moments – until SPD Interior Senator Iris Spranger recently announced that Charlottenburg’s Mommsenstadion should be made suitable for the third division for the European Championship in the summer at the Senate’s expense.

There was no more talk of the sports forum, the flags at the BFC fluttered at half-mast and the head of the Economic Council, Peter Meyer, wrote disillusionedly in the fan forum: “I believed in it, and in my life a handshake between men has always been worth something. The dream of the sports forum has died and there is no hope anymore.« Dynamo fans started an online petition that has so far been signed by a manageable 5,700 people.

Ballhaus East

Imago/Matthias Koch

Frank Willmann looks at the football between Leipzig, Łódź and Ljubljana.

The winner of the last two Berlin football weeks is called Tennis Borussia. You can’t believe it there – so lucky for an ambitious fifth division team that is as far away from the third division as Earth is from Mars. From today onwards only champagne! As if out of nowhere, Tebe gets a half-new stadium because another training stadium is needed in the immediate vicinity of the Olympic Stadium for the European Championships, it is said. I congratulate!

The BFC, which was left behind in the stadium issue, won 1-0 in Meuselwitz at the weekend, is chilling in second place and is a hot candidate for the 3rd league. Only Greifswald is currently standing in the way of Dynamo’s first promotion to professional football, what an opportunity for the BFC and Berlin! In between, a dynamically denying local CDU politician reported from the Hohenschönhausen sports forum: “I always said I still had hope. And this hope has increased again since the coalition partners spoke. «Aha. The next few weeks and months will show whether the cuddly information is a fake local political dwarf in babbling mode or a true friend of people and the BFC.

On Friday, the Tennis Borussians will be allowed to play in the Mommsenstadion for the last time in the major league. Will the excavators really roll and the area will shine in new splendor in June? I dare to doubt that a little, after all, we live in Berlin, the city of unfulfilled political promises – or should I write “promises” (housing, traffic, Jahnsportpark, city motorway, airport, Tempelhofer Feld)?

But there are also good things to report from Berlin’s perspective. On Saturday, Hertha’s Ostkurve interrupted the game for 32 minutes with flying tennis balls during the game against HSV in the Olympic Stadium – in order to protest against the investment of investors in the DFL, which is rejected by all active fan groups. Great tennis!

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