Again and again it resounded and echoed through downtown Munich on Saturday: “Sea! – Hawks! Sea! – Hawks! Sea – Hawks! Sea! – Hawks!” With their traditional cheering, the fans of the American football club from Seattle got in the mood for an eagerly awaited premiere of the US professional league NFL – the first league game between two teams on German soil.
If only the impressions from Saturday had gone, one could have believed that the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with their superstar Tom Brady was a home game for the Seahawks – although on Sunday at the Fröttmaninger Arena about 5300 miles or 8500 kilometers away compete from home.
“We did everything we could to make the game a home game,” says Maximilian Längen, the media officer for the “German Seahawkers”, the world’s largest fan club with 1,800 members from Washington State in the north-west of the USA. They even had a banner made that read the weekend’s motto, “Home Game.” And they already presented that in the afternoon at a meeting with their sports friends who had traveled from all over the world: Several hundred of the fans, dressed in the club colors dark blue and neon green, gathered on the steps of the opera for a group photo.
In the evening the banner hung over the Schneider Bräuhaus in the valley, which the Seahawkers had reserved for the whole evening. Around 900 fans celebrated the hoped-for victory of their favorite team with beer and appetizers and a live band. It wasn’t the only NFL-related party that night and days, but according to an insider, it was the best. The man had for the sports channel ran.de checked out all locations and events. And there have been a few of those.
The NFL has conquered downtown Munich.
(Photo: IMAGO)
The Hofbrauhaus, headquarters of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“You won’t remember every game in your career, but you will remember this one,” said Buccaneers quarterback Brady.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
By Thursday at the latest, the NFL had conquered downtown Munich and marked their territories. In front of the Feldherrnhalle, for example, she had set up oversized helmets from all her 32 clubs for advertising purposes – on Saturday afternoon you could hardly see them for the crowd. The Odeonsplatz was buzzing, and from the jerseys and hats fans of all 32 teams must have been there. Queues formed in front of some striking photo motifs on the edge of the square, as well as in front of the container with the fan articles, where the end stretched back to Residenzstrasse. All day long, these lines of people should tell you where there was something for football fans to do.
For example in the Hofbräuhaus, the headquarters of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, officially hosting the game. At times, up to 100 people waited in front of a barrier to be let in. Inside, the team’s mascot and cheerleaders welcomed the fans and posed for selfies – the opportunity to pose with the suntanned women from Florida was particularly popular with the male visitors. Most of the Buccaneers’ followers sat at the tables, but there were also a few from other teams in between, even those from Sunday’s opponent, the Seattle Seahawks. They could eat and drink completely undisturbed.
In the afternoon it was so narrow in the pedestrian zone that the police issued a traffic jam report.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“It’s not like football,” confirmed a bouncer at the valley where the New England Patriots opened a branch this week: “They’re very relaxed about football,” because everything is very peaceful. The interior was similar to the Hofbräuhaus, only it was narrower and the dominant colors and logos were different. But the record champion of the NFL also offered his cheerleaders and his mascot as a selfie motif; On the other hand, former Patriots pro Sebastian Vollmer, the first German to win the NFL title, the Super Bowl, was only briefly seen.
In the meantime, the football fans, who had sometimes traveled from all over the world, populated the pedestrian zone to such an extent that the police issued a traffic jam report shortly before 3 a.m. in the afternoon: “A large number of people are currently concentrated at a construction site area on Neuhauser Strasse (between Kapellenstrasse and Ettstraße). In order to prevent danger, police forces are on site and divert the incoming streams of visitors (“shopping public”).”
However, it was not the usual “shopping crowd” that squeezed through the bottleneck, but rather a new football audience: just before the construction site is the Augustiner headquarters, these days the official home base of the Seattle Seahawks. And there too: long traffic jams in front of the entrances. Further up, at the Karlstor, the next crowd. It extended from Saturn around the corner to Herzog-Wilhelm-Strasse, where it was then almost impossible to get through: players from the teams were announced for an autograph appointment in a sports shop. And so there were a few hundred people waiting there. It didn’t matter to whom exactly – the main thing was a real NFL professional.
When the shopping crowd went home in the evening, the football fans were still hanging around town and forming queues in front of the so-called hot spots, the football venues designated by the NFL. And if you couldn’t get in, you could sit outside next door, at the Viktualienmarkt, at the Platzl. In any case, hardly anyone let the upcoming cold take away their desire for the big football party.