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Jacob Sweetman: Shit, Potsdam – get off your ass and jam

The sports desk is confused. More Berliners seemed to be willing Bayern to lose in the Cup final against Werder Bremen than even know about Turbine Potsdam's appearance in the Women's Champions League final on Thursday.

Image for Jacob Sweetman: Shit, Potsdam - get off your ass and jam
Photo courtesy of Turbine Potsdam

The sports desk is confused. More people in Berlin seemed to be willing Bayern to lose in the Cup final against Werder Bremen on Saturday (although that might just be the pubs I go to) in their pursuit of an unprecedented treble than even know about Turbine Potsdam’s appearance in the Women’s Champions League final on Thursday.

This is, after all, the country that (outside of the States, perhaps) is the most successful and serious about women’s football, yet Kicker magazine decide to do a comparison between the two “prettiest” players involved with their quirks ( “collecting designer clothes”: Lotta Schelin, Olympique Lyon) and trademarks (“painted fingernails”: Lira Bajramaj, Turbine Potsdam). Admittedly, in the same issue there is a big write-up of the DFB Womens cup final in Köln, but I have seen no build-up to the game (the first under the Champions League moniker) in the German press and particularly here in Berlin, where you’d think it could make some waves because it’s, you know, about 20 minutes from Potsdam. Christ, they insist you go out to bloody Sanssouci enough.

Four other, presumably uglier, Potsdam players join Bajramaj as European Champions of last year with Germany, which the country DID seem to notice. I certainly did, but then that was mostly because I watched England get totally stuffed in that final with my neighbour- who mostly resembles a long haired elephant seal and seems to spend his life barking like one between slugs of Öttinger – and his drunken pals. They decided last summer that they loved women’s football. It was excrutiating. I started off insisting that England (and, by proxy, me) were serious about women’s football, and by the end was crying that it really wasn’t that important at all.

I watched a lot of that European Championships. The football itself didn’t actually seem to be very good, but then some of us will (and do) watch anything. The figures (no, not those ones) speak for themselves. A total of 26,282 people were there to watch FCR 2001 Duisburg beat FF USV Jena in Saturday’s final, which is a record for European women’s club competition. It’s also nice to see a couple of teams from the former East actually competing for honours; this season, none of them are in the actual Bundesliga.

DFB supremo Dr. Theo Zwanziger was there in person to give the title (back – they took it last year, too) to Turbine when they won the league a couple of weeks ago, which does impart importance, but I couldn’t help but find the Kicker piece irritating. Flicking back through old copies, I realised I might be being too right on for the sake of it. There is a comparison bit every week in the “fun” Anstoß page. My favourite is from January 16 (the cover was Lothar Mattheus: “I was never an egotist”. Brilliant). Jürgen Klopp (Borussia Dortmund coach) “hates waterbeds”, whereas Bruno Labbadia (now ex-Hamburg coach) “loves waterbeds”. I’m not sure what this tells us about them, me or the magazine. Probably nothing, but I was surprised at Kloppo’s reaction to the question. As a man who has said in public he would gladly accept homosexual footballers on his team, I’d have thought that he would be a little bit more relaxed in the sack, but that’s the problem with expectations.

For what it’s worth, Bajramaj looks like she could well have earned her nickname of “Diva” and that Schelin does indeed change her hairstyle a lot. But since his arrival in Berlin on Monday, Hertha’s new coach Markus Babbel has upped the sartorial stakes entirely and decided that that the Mourinho/Guardiola era in football management is best served by looking sharper than a bad Mojito. The second division is a rum do alright ,and he’s been given a year to get them out of it.

In short: ignore this ramble (tenuous links aside), watch the game on Thursday and screw Bayern vs Inter on Saturday. You’ve got better things to do. Here’s hoping that in Potsdam (and by extention, Berlin) a little bit of football pride can be brought back after the mostly horrible football season this city has just had.