Signal Iduna Park’s changing rooms are hidden deep inside the stadium.
Fresh coats of emulsion aside, they haven’t been renovated properly since the ground’s opening in 1974.
Nothing has ever been done like this. Borussia DortmundSince then, has left a legacy there. The 1980s saw a great industrial decline in Ruhr Valley and the subsequent mass unemployment. Their Icarus-like rise to and fall in the 1990s and the subsequent rebirth under Hans Joachim Watzke that saw them climb back up the ladder.
There aren’t any aphorisms, slogans or other markings on the wall. Not even a hint black or yellow.
A plain table is placed in the center of the floor. There are two to three feet between each side. Iron hooks line both the walls and the wall. The only clue as to what lies above comes from the tiny stickers with each player’s name and photo on, placed next to those hooks, telling you who changes where. This could also be any dressing area at any level of the game, in any part of world.
Dortmund wants it that way.
The first-team players spend just a few days a month at Signal Iduna Park, so available funding has been better directed towards the club’s training facility, but it’s meant that as this temple of football has grown and been expanded — new parts were bolted on in the 1990s and then again before GermanyThe 2006 event was hosted by World Cup — these dressing rooms have remained locked in time.
The Signal Iduna Park stadium is deep below the dressing rooms (Photo by Seb Stafford-Bloor).
It was an honor to be there.
It must be so special on a matchday. Football may have evolved, but the minutes waiting for the referee’s knocks are the same. You can hear the nervous anticipation rising from the stands, as the studs tap on the ground, your nerves bouncing against the walls. This is what it looks like. Imagine the adrenaline rush and your heart rate.
This is the place to be.
This is especially important before a Rivierderby.
The Dortmund-Schalke rivalry is rife with animosity, which can only be incubated by geographical proximity.
The dressing room should be ready for the break-through as soon as the yellow and green pyro clouds rise from the stands opposite and merge into a thick cordite cloud over the pitch.
Carsten Cramer is one of Dortmund’s managing directors and has been at the club since 2010.
He’s forthright and precise when he talks, even in a second language. On the eve of the weekend’s game, in a suite high above the stadium on a dusky Friday, he’s holding up one of the club’s famous black and yellow shirts to a room of journalists.
“It’s a very simple message,” he says. “It’s no coincidence the club’s name is on the top (across the shoulders) and not the player’s name (which is printed further down, below the numbers). The club is the message.”
Cramer believes what he’s saying. It can be difficult to find affirmation in your identity when a sport is dominated by the few, and where the best players march to the richest clubs at ever-earlier years. German football is a great example of this. Bundesliga, which offers atmosphere, affordability and fan experience as a counter-weight to Bayern Munich’s decade of domestic dominance, that’s probably even more true.
Cramer is a realist. He understands what’s happening elsewhere in the global game and how Dortmund’s place within it is challenged by the migration patterns and developing trends. But he’s defiant and convincing.
“We have been playing football for 113 years,” he says. “We did so with Erling HaalandAnd without Erling Haland. We did it together with Robert Lewandowski. Without him, the club can still attract 81,000 members. We are always sold out.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone arguing with Cramer.
He’s slender and dressed all in black and while he’s cordial and warm and happy to grant an audience, he punches out sentences in German-inflected English with absolute conviction. It’s compelling. It’s especially so when Signal Iduna park is visible through the window behind him.
The ground is an amazing wonder. Inside, it’s like something that has been chiselled out of a coalface. It’s dark and heavy, and even with nobody else there it has a distinct gravity.
The Gelbe Wand, or the Yellow Wall is the most famous south stand. Walking on those steps feels like an invasion, rather than just passing through the dressing room door.
The capos’ platforms are there, alongside the crude, circular drum-holders. It’s the stadium’s engine room, its heartbeat; in less than 24 hours, it will be a valley of smoke and fire and noise, a vivid symbol of the city’s love and loathing.
When full, Borussia Dortmund’s Yellow Wall is one of the most striking sights in European football (Photo: Seb Stafford-Bloor)
Jurgen Klopp shouldn’t have been allowed as a coach in such an arena. Combining his rhetoric and personality with Signal Iduna Park’s potency seems at best ludicrously unfair and at worst deeply irresponsible. The roof slopes down on all sides over the sharp-banked tops. This means that any noise coming from those stands is directed back towards the pitch. It must not be holy.
I asked United States International after the game Giovanni ReynaDuring a derby, who are the Dortmund leaders? Who beats on their chests? Who growls at you? I want him to tell me it’s Jude Bellingham, so that I can confirm what I think I’ve seen and mine a valuable little paragraph from the occasion. No chance. He doesn’t know. It was too loud for him to hear the sound above that level.
Dortmund are currently second in Bundesliga with five wins and two defeats from seven games. (Photo by Seb Stafford-Bloor
And that’s how the 2022 Revierderby starts: loudly. When the players’ studs have clattered and that knock has come on the dressing-room doors, the two teams walk down the sloping tunnel, towards the light, and out into a furnace of colour, sound and seething local hatred.
What is the Bundesliga? Whatever it may be, its spirit dwells in those moments — those flourishes of spirit and expression. It has its challenges and its problems and its conundrums to solve, but it’s a league of matchdays in which context matters only so much as you allow it to.
Fundamentally, it’s a league that can really move you. It has many experiences that can stir the soul.
I’m new to it. I’ve only lived in Germany for a few years now and I haven’t even scratched the surface.
I was initially interested in learning the league. I read books and watched games and absorbed everything I possibly could, only to find that really — as is true everywhere — the country’s footballing culture is only discoverable in person. It’s at the end of a train line or outside a stadium. It’s in listening to someone tell you how they fell in love with a club or why fan ownership matters to them.
That process, I’ve learned, is going to take years, decades.
The other thing I’ve learned recently is that, yes, when they call you late at night, the police really do ask if you’re sitting down.
My year was spent mainly in England.
Early February saw me return to the hospital I was born in a panicked 24 hour span. A doctor shut the door behind me and told me that my mother had two fatal brain tumours. He also said that they were looking into a second mass in her right lung.
I knew there was something wrong. In the latter part of 2021, she complained about pain in her shoulder. She said it was likely a pulled muscle and that I shouldn’t be concerned. As autumn turned into winter, she began to fall over. She’d phone and laugh in that self-deprecating way of hers, describing how she’d had to be scooped up by a stranger, but “don’t worry, you know the council doesn’t grit those roads when it’s icy”.
Our delusion crumbled in February. Doctors don’t often tell patients that they are going to die. Instead, they use words like ‘palliative’ and ‘symptom control’ which sound nicer but which somehow give you even less hope. I’m an only child and she was long-divorced, so I moved to England, lived out of a bedroom at my father’s house and held her hand as she walked towards the end.
I don’t know if I was a good carer. I was able to sort the medications every day, and I also learned how to clean and cook while we waited to see the hospice workers. One month turned into two, then two became three. It’s a bizarre existence.
Football was always my refuge. In my mind, if something like that ever happened, I thought I would be one of those people to find solace in the game’s powerful meaninglessness. Perhaps I’d lose myself in the recesses of a new league. Maybe I’d affect a lilt in my voice when talking about Italian football or roll my Rs too much after a weekend of La Liga. Maybe I’d become insufferable and lose my remaining friends.
As it turns out, the answer is no. If there is a metaphor to employ, it’s probably that of living underground and between two rooms separated by a long, dimly lit corridor. One room is where you sleep, eat, and attempt to finish your work on time. The other is where you see a person suffering from a deadly disease. You care nothing about anything else in the long corridor.
I was relieved by hospice care at the beginning of May and returned to Hamburg. I was glad to be home. TottenhamBeat ArsenalIn the north London derby, and to feel very connected again. The Monday following, like every other Spurs supporter, I was watching Arsenal’s game at St James’ Park. It was May 16, with an own goal just scored. NewcastleIn front. They were fantastic. They spent that night banging away at Arsenal’s half-fit defence and anyone watching knew — just knew — how that game was going to finish and what its implications were going to be.
What a wonderful feeling. The result and experience are not what is important, but the feeling of making a return on your investment. It’s actually a privilege to care deeply about football and I’d never realised. All of that adrenaline and tension, the way you shift and twitch in your stadium or sofa seat… that’s not guaranteed. It was back, and it was overwhelming.
The phone rang.
Truth be told, once the police ask if you’re sitting down, you don’t really hear much else. You don’t hear them tell you that they have very bad news or that your mother has died. I noticed. Bruno Guimaraes scoring a second for Newcastle — I have no idea why I didn’t turn the television off — but I have little memory of anything else, other than the officer sounding young and nervous and full of compassion.
It was the same for weeks and days. Although it was an easier experience, it was still a tiring and bureaucratic task to navigate through formal procedures and other organisational hurdles. It has put me in standby mode.
I function outwardly as normal — at least I hope so — but my emotional responses are bizarre. This new set of associations can also be attributed to football. Tottenham games remind me of my mum — not her laugh or her voice or the many things she did for me, but her death and the fact I wasn’t there when it happened.
It won’t last forever, at least not in the same way, but it is a strange place to be left in.
It is a great privilege to be a neutral in a stadium. It is an honor to be a neutral in a derby.
Even after the south stand is down, the pyro fog has dissipated and you can still see it ripple with the action on pitch. It’s not quite as violent as the old terraces that would whip people around for a few metres, but it is enough to create a sonogram the game.
If nothing is going on, tiny clouds of smoke appear from the stand and puff out rhythmically, betraying a thousand cigarettes.
Dortmund’s 1-0 win over Schalke boosted their prospects as they aim to win their first title since 2012 (Photo: Seb Stafford-Bloor)
Dortmund and Schalke have a hatred for each other. It’s not rivalry, it’s loathing. Bayern against Dortmund is a business battle. These games are part a long-running feud. They are also two flawed teams. Dortmund are quick and open. In the first half, they are disconnected in attack. They are also vulnerable on the break. They also lose. Marco Reus, his ankle ligaments have been damagedIn a tangle avec Florian Flick. The 33-year-old, who is suddenly out of a World Cup spot, leaves the pitch in tears.
“Auf wiedersehen!” mock the Schalke fans in the corner, setting light to their bright red flares and stoking the feud. The rest of the pitch roars in fury and sends a sound up that rises high above the players into the layer cordite suspended in midair.
Signal Iduna Park was filled with smoke and fire on Saturday for one of Germany’s most hostile derbies (Photo: Seb Stafford-Bloor)
After half-time, word spreads that Augsburg are leading against Bayern and Dortmund’s search for a goal grows more tense.
Schalke delight in their role of spoiler. The visiting fans roar with joy when they see the winning throw-ins. Every Dortmund attack that dies fortifies Schalke’s defence further and with just 12 minutes left, this seems likely to be another day when the gap shows — when Bayern either dig their way out of another hole or somehow find a way of winning even in defeat.
That changes at 11 minutes.
Youssoufa MoukokoTo score at the Yellow Wall’s foot, he escapes from his marker. The stadium then makes an unusual noise. It’s guttural and frenzied, the kind that straightens your back and hits you square in the heart.
The 17-year-old is almost overcome by what he’s done and runs to the corner, before spreading his arms, closing his eyes and roaring at the sky. He’s quickly lost under a pile of Dortmund players, but as they celebrate in a far corner, the beer continues to spray from every part of the ground. Above and below, to one side and the other, it’s as if Signal Iduna Park is weeping hysterically for joy.
Dortmund won a significant win thanks to Moukoko (17), as they adjust their lives without Erling Haaland. (Photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images
Moukoko might be the game’s next great centre-forward. It’s possible. He’s also charming and has one of those warm, expressive faces. Sometimes, players can be a bit flippant. The media training then locks you out of all that. He is not the only one.
His eyes danced in the mixed zone as he answered questions. He knew exactly what that moment meant — to him, to them, to everyone in that tiny, spartan dressing room and beyond.
While he speaks, Schalke staff transport containers of kit to the team bus. At one point, a battalion police stomped through the stadium underpass, carrying shields and batons, in pursuit of distant sirens. After he has finished his interviews, Moukoko sits up on the steps above his dressing room and texts while he waits to see his car. The supporters outside will melt away from the stadium and into bars and restaurants before finally returning to their lives.
It’s the end act of a quintessential piece in Bundesliga theatre.
Some feel that this league lacks the star power and competition needed to drive a competition like the. Premier League. For others, the games feel like spectacles. They are part of something bigger than what the final league table looks each May. It is able to reach people regardless of their loyalty, which is truly rare.
These qualities are always present in derbies, which is indicative of the overall tone of the German game. It’s comforting in its depth. It’s full of dedication and stories of sincerity. Nothing about the visible symbols of all that commitment — the flares, the noise, the fire, the cheap travel and tickets — are suggestive of this Being just a distraction, either. It’s a place to actually be, not somewhere just to hide and recover while the weather changes, and perhaps the truth behind football’s enduring appeal is exactly that.
A recent article compared grief to climbing down a mountain. That’s a simple but compelling metaphor and it makes enough sense: everyone has to find their own route, in their own way and in their own time.
The flaw in this statement is the suggestion that someone can leave the mountain once they are down and move on from their grief.
For example, it might be more beneficial to learn ways to accept the inevitable loss and sickness, and how to challenge what it leaves behind. Whether that be sorrow, regret or anger — probably all three, all at the same time — the counter would seem to be something enlivening, something that blows the dust from your eyes.
There are certain places in football that you can do this.
(Top photo by David Inderlied/picture Alliance via Getty Images
