North Rhine-Westphalia: The Heart Of German Football

A Road Trip Dedicated To Schnitzel And Stadion

Photo by Lars Bo Nielsen on Unsplash

From the top tier of the Bundesliga all the way to the doomed cellars of the near-amateur Regionalliga: North Rhine-Westphalia is brimming with football clubs. If you want to visit them all, you could follow the trail of the Deutsche Fußballroute NRW. That’s German for a road trip to 15 clubs and grounds in the region between the metropole Cologne and the rural city of Münster. In the summer of 2019, when Corona was still only the name of a Mexican football player and also of tequila fueled beer, I took my ‘Wagen’ onto the ‘Autobahn’ and got a taste of what really are the heartlands of German football. This is part 1 of my journey.

The female employee of the Aachen franchise of the German RAC gives me this dazed look. The road book of what? Me again mentioning the Deutsche Fußball Route NRW doesn’t help. A colleague comes to her aid. He shakes his head. Never heard…