Bundesliga Best: Hertha Berlin

On 26NOV11, the supporters of Hertha Berlin in their Ostkurve won my attention as the best of that Bundesliga weekend with this display:

Bundesliga Weekend Favorite: FC Ingolstadt's BRC'08

My German fussball pick of the weekend goes to FC Ingolstadt's supporter group named BRC '08. They started out in 2008 and to this day consist of 14-20 year olds. They spent several months independently saving the money and they consider this their best ever display. RESPECT!

Bundesliga Matchday 12 Favorite

My Bundesliga display of the weekend goes to FC Koln's away support at Werder Bremen.

Something about that worn look

Banners looking old, maybe torn, frayed on the edges. The paint on a logo or text is chipped, cracked, maybe even chunks are missing. To some this may look tired, and the banner appears  ready to be tossed, replaced, or maybe the need to paint over the cracks and chips. Sometimes this is the case, but often times, this distressed look can  be unique to the supporters area and railings because they have worn the test of years. Although these distressed banners are inanimate objects, if one looks at them, they show years of joy and pain, winning and losing. They have been through the elements of all four weather seasons, have been pulled, folded, balled up like twine. Sometimes beer or even stadium food might appear on the banner. At the end of the day and night, these banners remain a vital part of supporter culture.  Like the worn look, supporters of the team go through the good and bad, but still remain true to the colors of the team.

Bundesliga Best: Round 13 from BL 2.

My Bundesliga pick of the weekend goes to BL.2 supporters from FC Union Berlin. Not that elaborate in terms of display, but scarves up was the theme for their match vs. St. Pauli. Club and/or city anthem playing, people singing along, SCARVES UP!

2011 Two-stick flags

So for the 2011 season, I made some two-sticks but not as many as I had wanted. 





Also during the season, some other supporters picked up on the addiction. (photos courtesy of Massive Report
 
  
 

Visually speaking...............

So after some thinking, I have the itch once again to get into designing scarves for the Nordecke and well, fellow Columbus supporters overall. The ultimate goal is to provide a way for supporters to obtain affordable scarves to display in visual support for Columbus, while also showing pride at home, away, work or school, and any other place in the world. This project will take time, money and dedicated efforts but with true faith, anything is possible.

Bundesliga Best on Matchday 10

This past weekend in the Bundesliga was status quo in terms of  excitement thanks to full stadia and supporter culture both home and away.  My pick, and maybe it is the angle of the photo, but I liked the action from VfB Stuttgart (and no this isn't just because I follow them in the Bundesliga!). The away support at Nurnberg depicts everything one could ever want in a match. Good show for the support of the team!

German Pick of the Weekend

As I have mentioned earlier in this blog, The German Bundesliga has been an inspiration to me in terms of numbers of home and away supporters. Also, the vocal and visual support is something to behold in person, I can imagine. Each week I go to various web sites (mainly stadionwelt-fans.de) and choose a personal favorite visual from any of the German leagues. This past weekend, my pick from the weekend action in Germany goes to VfL Bochum's supporters Bundesliga 2 week 11. Big overhead banner celebrating 100 years of the club playing at the same place, Castroper Strasse.

Stepping it up with flags

Today I've completed the painting of my second large flag. I feel excited about this not only because of the concept of the flag's design, but also because of my discovery of the extension pole. This pole is meant for painting at tall heights but I decided to take a chance and see how it would work as a flag pole. Before this, I would use ten-foot tall pvc pipes for my tall flags. Now I have an extension pole that goes up to 12 foot tall! 

It's also adjustable in height. The twist grip (as pictured) locks the upper part in place at whatever height.

Fusible thread is a lifeline!

After several years of toiling at uniting to lengths of fabric together, I discovered something called fusible thread. Before finding this, I used to either use fusible tape that I would have to iron together and then sew to reinforce the bond of the two fabrics. But the tape leaves a somewhat visible line on some displays. Another way that took a long time was putting pins to temporarily attach the fabric and then sew it. But now fusible thread will be the answer. It works like the fusible tape in that an iron is required, but it is thread form and it looks much better since it doesn't leave a line. This will save me a good amount of labor especially when it comes time for me to do longer banners and hopefully large overheads.

Suppo

The name of this character is Suppo and yes, this name is a derivative of the word supporter. He embodies everything that is Columbus Crew Soccer Club, knowing only the colors of them team. The team is known for being "America's Hardest Working Team" and Suppo lives up to working hard as a supporter. The action of rolling up the sleeves entails that he means business in every aspect of life, which is a typical no-nonsense trait of the people in Ohio and surrounding states. Suppo is an invention of sorts that began in a comic strip, but could eventually be more visible at Columbus matches.

Globally, supporter groups have used cartoon figures (similar to Suppo) for their logos. Who knows, maybe Suppo could be a logo for a newer supporter group in the Nordecke. Here are several logos (club team listed next to logo)

AIK Stockholm (Sweden)

FC Lorient (France)

SC Corinthians (Brazil)

VfB Stuttgart (Germany)

Olympique Lyonnais (France)

A Shift in This Journey

An early entry in this blog mentioned about the history of my interest in tifo displays and overall supporter culture. I recently reflected upon my journey with those influences that have motivated me to create atmosphere. The journey began in the mid-late 1990's when Serie A was being shown on SportsChannel Ohio. I would admire the work of the choreographies, banners, flags and the unified songs, and overall passion shown be supporters from most Serie A clubs. This motivated me to create banners for the Columbus Crew, but I really never had a knowledge on how to make them big, or as detailed. All of my work was done freehand since I wasn't aware that projectors could make the job easier. But after a while, due to crackdowns on supporter culture (due to fan deaths, racism, etc.) and matches that to me were losing in excitement in style, I would somewhat lose interest in Serie A, and TV companies in the States would also somewhat due to a massive monster looming.

Enter the decade of the 2000's, a time in which the English Premier League set the world by storm with it's exposure. Clubs were expanding their "brand" all over the world and with this expansion came TV packages that would have the world see exciting matches. I fell for the bait myself and would admire the supporters and the amount of passion they would show. The one thing that this league did not have though was the displays that I saw in Serie A. If there were displays, it was for massive Champions League or Cup matches. There came about rulings in the government on down cracking down on supporters standing in the all-seater stadia. This would hamper the atmosphere severely in some cases and cause moments of silence even in some EPL matches. By now there had been several leagues being broadcast not only from Europe but Latin America also, which showed the fervor from the barra bravas and torcidas.

As I type right now, I have fallen almost to a love with the Bundesliga supporter culture. The grounds are always full and there always seem to be a vocal din with visuals from home and away supporters. The use of two-stick flags (doppelhaltern) has been inspirational to the point that the next few months, my aim is to create as many as possible for the Nordecke.

Where's my head at?

Not one blog entry on my part since December. Why is this? Well, my off season was spent brainstorming and creating most of the banners in the photo, which is from the first match of the 2011 season. Also, I have been working on side projects like the chibi/manga comic called CrewIsM, designing scarves, thinking of flag ideas, and just anything imaginative that will benefit the section. Facebook seems to be the place where my inner thoughts have appeared, daily, but the blog entry is a place that I can ramble on deeply I'd say. So here I go again, playing catch up.