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All round crazy about the round ball

The German football league, Bundes Liga, drew to a close last weekend (13 May). The local team Bayern-München (quite predictably) won the championship again, and the fans were of course keen to witness the moment at the stadium or in front of big projection screens everywhere. The whole town was quite crazy as you can see from the photos below.

Bayern-München gave its fans 20 reasons to celebrate by bagging its 20th Bundes Liga championship. It may not be a surprise if the team makes its 21st next season. As I said, football results seems rather predictable in Germany and it makes tipping notoriously easy. My colleagues organised a competition where they had to tip the eventual league standing before the season kicked off. It turned out that the winner basically copied last season's standing and replaced the relegated teams with the new ones. The 'prize' for winning, however, is to cook a barbecue for the whole department. Now I know what (not) to do when I join in the tipping next season ...

Football fans don't have to wait long until their adrenaline gets pumping again. World Cup is only just more than 2 weeks away. Any tips for the winning team?



Fröttmaning station, the gateway to Bayern-München's home ground Allianz Stadium.







'Tickets, please!' cries a desperate fan holding the cardboard sign.















Allianz Stadium from afar (left) and closer (right). This is also where the World Cup games will be played.


Body search before entry - are these people going to a football match or jail?







Some fans decided to fight their ways to Fröttmaning all the way from the Marienplatz underground railway station in the city ...






... while some would rather indulge in the festivities in front of the big screen at Marienplatz.







20 championships, 20 times the jubilation.










But if Bayern-München doesn't win the 21st championship next year, I'm afraid tragedies like this will repeat all over Munich!
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Comments

flygirl said…
well I guess we can sneer at you for "jumping on the bayern bandwagon" or some such thing. lucky chap, are you going to see any World Cup matches?
07/06/2006, 12:47
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