Ingolstadt away 11.12.2011
On paper, the worst away day of the season. 1400km round-trip, an Ikea stadium, a fanscene that makes Hoffenheim look like Eintracht Frankfurt- there is practically nothing exciting about Ingolstadt, apart from the fact that it was sure to be three points for St. Pauli...
To make the trip worthwhile, I travelled to Stuttgart on Friday afternoon to visit my girlfriend. That way, the match on Sunday was the culmination of a two day trip and I saved myself 10 hours on the bus on Saturday night. The alarm went off early enough on Sunday morning so that we could arrive in Ingolstadt by 11 on the regional train. The plan was then to meet with three friends from Munich and get to the stadium and have a decent catch-up with all those who’d travelled down by bus. Ingolstadt being one of the bleakest, most provincial towns in Germany, however, buses from the train station to the stadium only ran every 30 minutes. Not only that, but as we got on to the first one a policeman informed us that it was going via Ingolstadt city centre and would take an hour to reach the ground. Whether that was true? No idea. ACAB etc. We got off though, as we had beer to drink anyway. Eventually another bus came (after almost an hour of standing about) and we were taken to the Audipark-Arena.
Ingolstadt is the middle of nowhere, but the Audipark-Arena is built outside of the middle of nowhere, next to a power station which is reminiscent of Stalinist-era Siberia. Bleak is not nearly superlative enough to describe the total vacuum of anything interesting. The stadium itself is a small version of the standard modern arena. Very boring, no character.
Matches like this are always strange. Around 150 fans travelled down from Hamburg, but there were in total approx 3,000 in the away end. Of course, you do not have to live in Hamburg to be a St. Pauli fan (Kurpfalz, Suedzecken, St Pauli Mafia etc), but generally at away games where there are a lot of people from the surrounding area (and who by association don’t go to many games) it is hard to get a good atmosphere going. Maybe those who haven’t travelled far feel a bit intimidated by the “regulars” and lack the confidence to properly join in (see also this season Karlsruhe away), particularly when things aren’t going according to plan on the pitch. However, all things considered the atmosphere was not bad. After a small brown and white choreo, Aux Armes got off to a jittering start. The support seemed to go through different phases. The Fettes Brot song was good, some other regulars were poor. Overall I’d say somewhere between 6-7 out of 10.
Consistent, however, were St. Pauli on the pitch; consistently poor. To my mind we created one chance in 90 minutes, which Max Kruse blasted into row Z when through on goal. Otherwise we had a lot of possession but created next to nothing. Ingolstadt on the other hand were obviously limited in their talent, but were clinical and worked Philipp Tschauner a few times in goal up until the 88th minute. At which stage, Ingolstadt got a corner. Reminiscent of all of last season, St. Pauli failed to deal with it as it came in and a goalmouth scramble ensued, resulting in a goal. There was some controversy over a suspected hand ball in the build up, but generally speaking St. Pauli didn’t deserve to get anything out of this match and 1-0 was a fair reflection of the game. Perhaps the team under-estimated Ingolstadt. Certainly there can be no claim that injuries had any part to play, as virtually every player was available to Andreas Schubert. In light of the promotion challenge, this was undoubtedly a bad loss. However, the general feeling amongst most people associated with St. Pauli, myself included, is that getting promoted again so soon after relegation may not be in the club’s best interest. A period of stability and the opportunity for Schubert to properly form his own team over 2-3 years would, certainly in my opinion, be preferential before we start seriously considering the Bundesliga again. From that point of view, the loss was not too devastating. On the other hand, however, for me personally it was a shame that my guests saw such a poor game. But so ist das Leben, what’re you gonna do.
After leaving the stadium I said bye to my guests and hopped on the bus. Disgracefully, there were just 25 people on the fanladen bus. Ingolstadt is undeniably far away and not an exciting trip, but perhaps some of those who complain when they don’t get tickets for Rostock, Berlin or Dresden should think about why they’re not higher up the fanladen ticket distribution list. However on the bright side for those of us who went, this meant 2 seats for every passenger, meaning a half-decent sleep was possible and that work on Monday might just be bearable. The trip home otherwise consisted of eating tangerines, getting stoned and watching the Hangover (the German translation is actually quite decent).
Summary? “Egal wo das ist wir sind immer bei dir” [no matter where, we’re always there with you]
James
