Lübeck celebrates | Holstein Kiel relegated: wooden leg gone

Life as a football fan is wonderful: you can cram everything uncivilized, warlike, and aggressive into this secondary existence, and then your dear soul can finally rest for a few days. You can go back to earning your living without shouting at dreamy columnists in the editorial office corridor or setting things on fire in the next checkout line. Other people need religions or nations to unleash their hatred. I have football instead of a faith, and my nation is beautiful Lübeck, which ruled the Baltic region for centuries as the head of the Hanseatic League and has become quite respectable as a result, so much so that even the most rigorous theater critics return from there and praise the city's beauty.

The only shadow that lies over the pearl of the Baltic Sea is the never-healed disgrace: that after the war the Allies came up with the crazy idea of ​​proclaiming a town north of Preetz the capital of the new federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, a terrible eyesore, a Danish fishing village that was hyped up by Kaiser Wilhelm II as a base for his navy, much in the same way that Adolf Hitler founded the city of Wolfsburg for car manufacturing.

This pile of garbage is the antithesis of my charming, historically rich hometown. I personally know Lübeck residents who regularly have to travel there for work, north of Preetz, and who never mention the town's name, but always say, "Yesterday I was in Kackstadt again." Well, as Lübeck residents, one could largely ignore the sewer on the fjord, if it weren't for football! For many decades, it has forced us to compare our absolutely wonderful VfB Lübeck, the pride of the north, with the "storks" from Kackstadt, who, for some inexplicable reason, recently made it all the way to the Bundesliga, only to embarrass themselves there, down to their bones, smelling of rotten cod.

Oh, how wonderful that football exists! And that one carries within oneself this certain toxicity, this negativity that can turn something sad like relegation after poor sporting performance into a triumph, a bliss! When the team from Kackstadt was recently relegated again, the resident Minister-President Daniel Günther (CDU) falsely trumpeted: FC Kriegsmarine had "ignited a passion for football" in the state of Schleswig-Holstein (which, however, I grew up with in Lübeck 50 years ago, when they still played field handball in the so-called state capital), and he, the elected state leader, had no qualms about yelling on Facebook: "No other club, ONLY HOLSTEIN!"

I, on the other hand, did something I never normally do: I bought myself a cigar like a real macho. I got myself a piccolo (Rotkäppchen rosé). I swelled with pride. And celebrated in the park. Oh, those were glorious moments! Quel triomphe! As the French might say, and with him, of course, the columnist, who is doing better than ever and who is allowed to remark here, formally and thoughtfully: Shit, Holstein Kiel!