The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Halftime score: 0:0 Niko Bungert has a market value of €2.5m. He marked Robert Lewandowski (who scored 5 goals in 9 minutes against Wolfsburg last week) Market value? €50m He…
The Coface Arena in Mainz holds 34,000 spectators. It’s normally pretty full, but when Bayern Munich turns up, you’re like sardines in a tin. I figured that trying to score…
No sooner have you fallen in love with a player and got Gran to buy you his strip for Christmas than another club snaps him up and he’s gone. As…
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is an excellent national Sunday newspaper. It’s just that they don’t know sh*t from clay when it comes to forecasting the Bundesliga. Just look at last…
Wednesday in Mainz 05’s ancient Bruchweg stadium to see a pre-season test game against Lazio Roma. 2 of Christoph’s 7 grand-kids (Grace and Freya, 7 and 5) had turned up…
Lazio Roma is invariably a serious contender for championship honours in the Italian Serie A football league. Mainz 05’s ambition – declared annually – is just to stay in the…
The inventiveness of Mainz 05’s hard-core fans knows no bounds. Any vertical space is fair game, but thgs is creative – 19 on the left butress, 05 on the right…
Nikolce Noveski is a professional footballer, capped 58 times for Macedonia, played 347 games for Mainz05 over a period of 11 years. He’s a hard-as-nails /bites-yer-legs defender and by all…
I don’t get to go to many games of our local 1st Division football team, Mainz05. I should try harder. Someone wrote a Letter to the Editor last week, echoing…
Mainz 05. Home game. Park the car in Bretzenheim Walk through the fields.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, a highly regarded weekly sister publication to the quality national daily FAZ, isn’t too positive about Mainz 05’s chances in the Bundesliga/First Diviso=ion this year. OK,…
You’re up and down like a jack-in-the-box at a Mainz 05 game. The hard core fans start off a chant and then everyone’s on their feet joining in (with varying…
First game of the season (qualification game for the European League)and with a new trainer. Not the best game I’ve seen, but definitely not the worst, (although Stefan Bell’s about…
One of my sporting epiphanic experiences was watching a game of our local team, Mainz 05. Mainz had recently reappeared in the First Division and had a horde of middling-to-good…
Podlowski, Podolski , Müller and Unnamed – German national football team merchandising victims at the team’s training session at Mainz 05’s stadium last week.
Mainz has around 200,000 inhabitants. 20,000 of them turned up at the Coface Arena to watch the German national football team training for their friendly match against Paraguay on Wednesday…
If there’s one football (soccer to you…) team that polarises in Germany, it’s Bayern Munich. Hugely successful (which in itself generates a huge following – who wants to go through…
Seriously, what can beat this? A summer’s day out on the bike and not imagining in my WILDEST DREAMS that Mainz 05, our local team, would end the year at…
Only a matter of weeks until the agony starts. “How could they be leading 3:1 and allow 2 goals in the last 5 minutes?” “That new guy’s about as much…
Mainz 05, our very own 1st Division football (soccer) team, achieves its modest goal of staying up there with the Big Boys. And that 3 games before the end of…
….I guess it might as well be Werder Bremen. Burgundy market in Mainz yesterday and today with one of our twin towns, Dijon. The usual champagne/truffle/wine/paté/escargots gluttony, brightened by this…
This is one of the guys who got to keep his land when they built Mainz 05’s new football stadium. (True) story’s over here. This is farming like it used…
The foyer of the VIP lounge at Colosseum Cofacies decorated with Calderesque figures of “the beautiful game”, separated from the photographer by a thick pane of glass and hefty bouncers.…
Tomorrow’s the Big Day! Mainz 05, the local football [soccer] team moves from its current home of 20,300 seats to a flash new stadium of 34,000. Last game at the…
Mainz Daily Photo 