Why Borussia Dortmund is more than just a football club

"This is the greatest football stadium in the world," says bubbly Signal Iduna Park guide Kai Sickine just before the start of a tour of the stadium.

We are a total of 12 journalists from Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria on a three-day football tour of Germany, courtesy of Bundesliga International and StarTimes TV.

“Football as it is meant to be” was Bundesliga’s slogan for the tour and a visit to the famed Westfalenstadion, now called Signal Iduna Park after a naming rights deal with the giant insurance company from 2005 to 2021, was always going to be the highlight of the tour.

Home to growing powerhouse in German football Borussia Dortmund, the stadium has a capacity of 81,000 spectators. It is Germany's largest stadium and holds the European record for average fan attendance, set in the 2011–2012 season of 80,588 spectators per match over 17 home fixtures.

It has become a slaughterhouse of sorts for Dortmund aka BVB (Ballspielverein Borussia which loosely translates to ‘ball playing club Borussia’). This season, Dortmund, founded on December 19, 1909, are unbeaten at home, winning, 12 of their 14 games at the Signal Iduna Park thus far.

Part of the club's phenomenal record is down to the intimidating atmosphere at the southern end of the stadium where the famous “Yellow Wall" literally stands tall. This section has a capacity of 25,000 fans and is an all-standing area that is most loved by the passionate Dortmund fans who paint it a sea of churning, vibrant yellow on match days.

"It is the fans who said they wanted a standing area to feel more involved with the team," says Dortmund’s Managing Director Carsten Cramer.

"But it is not just the number of people who attend. For them football is a religion. It is the glue of this city. We have the biggest standing terraces in Europe and we just charge 15 Euros (equivalent of Sh1,700 at the current exchange rate). You will never experience the terrific atmosphere you get here anywhere else. It is unique and we are proud of it," said Cramer.

And you can tell that the locals have taken Dortmund to their hearts. At almost every corner of the city, you find the yellow and black colours of Dortmund. If you want to start a conversation with a Dortmund resident, mention the name BVB and the football banter kicks in. It is little wonder, the stadium is full of visitors on guided tours, and the southern section is, understandably, a favourite.

The section stands as tall as six storied building and occupies on entire side behind the goal. Way before match kick-off, the section is full of chanting, boisterous fans.

INTIMIDATING SONGS

Visiting players must surely hear their intimidating songs if they are not occupied with superstitious thoughts.

You see, before teams enter the changing rooms, they must go down a flight of stairs. The one to the left leads to the home team's section and is 12 flights.

The one to the right leads to the visiting team's area and is 13 flights. Was that deliberate by Dortmund, to spook the visitors with the unlucky number 13?

"The roof is so low on the visitors’ section that a player contemplating skipping the last step to avoid 13 steps will have to consider a nasty fall," Sickine says conspiratorially.

The changing rooms are Spartan but you notice two hair dryers in the home team’s side.

Sickine is ready with another anecdote: “We once received a star player who complained that there was no hair dryer in the visitors’ room. You know who that was?”

Twelve pairs of eyes stare back in quizzical silence.

“Cristiano Ronaldo,” he volunteers. Then he pre-empts the next obvious question: “An official complaint was filed at Uefa who ruled that he carries his own blow dryer when travelling. This is a football stadium remember.”

You can almost picture the famous Dortmund players who have walked on these steps, on these corridors and on this ground - Matthias Sammer, Jurgen Kohler, Jan Koller, Tomas Rosicky, Mats Hummels, Robert Lewandowski, Andre Schurrle, Mario Goetze, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and others.

New stars lined up on March 28 for the highly-anticipated Dortmund versus Wolfsburg Bundesliga fixture. On the morning of the match day, the stadium was teeming with workers preparing the grounds for the fixture.

According to Sickine, on a normal day about 150 personnel work for the stadium but on match day, more than 2,000 people are involved.

“We are more than a football club. Football bonds everyone here. Last year 56,000 people turned up at the stadium to sing Christmas carols. These are the fans of the club and we value them dearly,” says Cramer. Little wonder tickets at Signal Iduna Stadium are among those that cost the lowest in Germany.

The demand is exceptionally high and Dortmund could easily raise their retail price to earn more than the annual 40 million Euros they realise.

Says Cramer: “It would be easy for us to do that but it would change the crowd that comes for our matches.”

Before the match, pubs were open by 11am and the stadium gates at 1pm. Hotels, meanwhile, were full with travelling Dortmund fans from as far as Austria.
The noise even before kick-off was a physical force, like the thunder of a hundred Niagara Falls.

Dortmund left it late to defeat stubborn Wolfsburg 2-0, Paco Alcacer stabbing home a free kick from the edge of the danger area on 90 minutes. The Spanish striker, on the double, sealed victory with a cool finish at the end of a speedy counter four minutes later.

Before that mad four minutes, not a single soul had left the stadium, they started departing after being acknowledged by the players and lustily singing their anthem to a cacophonic crescendo long after the final whistle.

Dortmund was back on top of the league table at the expense of their more illustrious opponents Bayern Munich who drew away to Freiburg.

And it doesn’t get any better. Germany’s best two football clubs at the moment, Bayern and Dortmund, met on Saturday in Munich in a potential title-decider.

That is football made in Germany.