Being a VfB supporter and podcaster in the United States

With the Red Stri­pe: Hi Tra­vis and thank you for taking time to ans­wer our ques­ti­ons. First­ly, let’s talk about you: Who are you and how did you beco­me a fan and mem­ber of VfB Stutt­gart?

Tra­vis: As to VfB, my fan­dom is a long — and pro­ba­b­ly bor­ing! — sto­ry.

The short ver­si­on, though? I play­ed soc­cer as a youth, so always enjoy­ed the sport; the Ame­ri­can sports teams I fol­lo­wed were lou­sy for almost three deca­des, so I was loo­king for some­thing else to sup­port; becau­se of my Ger­man heri­ta­ge, I’d always been drawn to Ger­ma­ny. Once Bun­des­li­ga games beca­me available on TV in the Sta­tes in 2015, I gave the league some atten­ti­on, found VfB, and have been a fan — and a mem­ber — of VfB Stutt­gart ever sin­ce.

The long sto­ry… well… it’s kind of in three parts.

Part one is I play­ed soc­cer as a youth through high school, so I always enjoy­ed the sport. I was a clas­sic #9, if by “clas­sic” you mean “ter­ri­ble”! I like to think of mys­elf as the youth ver­si­on of Mar­tin Har­nik. Let that sink in!

Part two is that while I lik­ed soc­cer, in the U.S., Ame­ri­can foot­ball is by far the num­ber one sport, not even clo­se, and it was almost impos­si­ble to watch inter­na­tio­nal soc­cer of any kind unless it was the World Cup, at least not until may­be the mid-2000s. Anwya, the Ame­ri­can team I sup­port, the Cleve­land Browns, had been ter­ri­ble for a solid 25 years, and after so much ter­ri­ble, awful, just hideous, and bor­ing foot­ball, I was loo­king for a chan­ge.

Part three is that I was loo­king for some­thing to sup­port, and in the Sta­tes, that meant eit­her the MLS or the Pre­mier League as they were the only leagues on TV. But for wha­te­ver reason, tho­se leagues never inte­res­ted me — I found MLS bor­ing and Eng­land just never inte­res­ted me (which is iro­nic as my wife is an Eng­lish tea­cher!). But in 2015, FOX Sports star­ted to broad­cast Bun­des­li­ga matches on TV, and that ope­ned up a lot of Ame­ri­can eyes — inclu­ding mine! — to the various clubs around Ger­ma­ny. And as my last name and my family’s heri­ta­ge is pret­ty solid­ly Ger­man, and as I had always sup­port­ed the Ger­man natio­nal team in the World Cup, and I was drawn to that part of the world (in fact, Jeff, who is on the pod­cast, he and I tra­vel­led to Ger­ma­ny in 2012 for a two week trip — and then again in 2018 — and just fell in love with the coun­try), and the more I rese­ar­ched the uni­que­ness of the league (the fan cul­tu­re, the 50+1 rule, rele­ga­ti­on), well, it beca­me clear I was going to find what I was loo­king for in the Bun­des­li­ga.

That’s a long way to say I star­ted to watch Bun­des­li­ga matches in 2015 — around the same time you guys star­ted your blog! — but that doesn’t ans­wer why I’ve beco­me a devo­ted (and at times, over the top) VfB fan!

Again, once the Bun­des­li­ga was available to actual­ly watch on TV, then it came down to fin­ding a club. And as a histo­ry tea­cher, I get a per­ver­se plea­su­re out of rese­arch, lol, so I star­ted rese­ar­ching! And key to this is I didn’t want to just pick a ran­dom “I like their kit” or “Hey, they’re real­ly good” or “What’s the easie­st team to fol­low becau­se they’re on TV all the time?” club. No, I wan­ted a club that I could somehow con­nect with, that meant some­thing to me. So I deci­ded to nar­row my rese­arch to the clubs that were near what I like to call “Hasels­werdt Ground Zero” — that is, whe­re my fami­ly ori­gi­na­ted from.

Which wasn’t too dif­fi­cult, actual­ly. Like a lot of Ame­ri­cans, at some point we get invol­ved in try­ing to find out our genea­lo­gy, and thanks to my last name, it was pret­ty easy to find out whe­re the Hasels­werdt side of my fami­ly hai­led from — a num­ber of small vil­la­ges pret­ty much right in the midd­le of Stutt­gart and Karls­ru­he. So that meant it was imme­dia­te­ly down to four clubs — Stutt­gart, Frei­burg, Karls­ru­he, and Hof­fen­heim.

I deci­ded to watch all of their matches, or at least all of the matches I could during the second half of the 2015 sea­son, to see if the­re was a club that pas­sed the “eye test.” Becau­se of that, Karls­ru­he was imme­dia­te­ly out, but not becau­se of the reasons that may seem obvious to any Stutt­gart sup­port­er! Remem­ber, back then, the 2.Bundesliga wasn’t available to watch in any way shape or form, and becau­se KSC was in the 2.Bundesliga, they may as well have not exis­ted. Which I’m sure some VfB fans might say should hap­pen any­way!

Hof­fen­heim was out becau­se even then, even with my lack of know­ledge of the Bun­des­li­ga, I knew they just weren’t a fit. Call them pla­s­tic or call them bor­ing, wha­te­ver, but honest­ly, the big­gest reason I didn’t sup­port them was pro­ba­b­ly becau­se they were real­ly good back then — and again, who wants to be a front­run­ner?

Which left Frei­burg and Stutt­gart. Frei­burg had the initi­al lead, as it tur­ned out. Not for any­thing they did on the pitch but becau­se in 2012 Jeff and I had visi­ted the town and abso­lut­e­ly fell in love with it. In hind­sight, I don’t know why I ended up tur­ning my back on them (alt­hough Aus­tin has sin­ce fal­len in love with them!). I think it wasn’t any­thing they lacked as much as what VfB had.

One of tho­se things is that VfB sur­vi­ved the 2015 sea­son while Frei­burg were rele­ga­ted which meant the­re would be no way to actual­ly fol­low Frei­burg, so that defi­ni­te­ly hurt their chan­ces to win over my fan­dom. The big­ger reason, though, was that towards the end of that 2015 sea­son, as VfB was ral­ly­ing to try to sur­vi­ve with Huub at the helm, I was just real­ly fin­ding mys­elf drawn to VfB. Some of it was pro­ba­b­ly the simp­le fact they were win­ning matches. And some of it was the simp­le fact that their ico­nic kit and emblem are just so, so sharp. Defi­ni­te­ly not the reasons you should be a fan, but hey, any­thing helps! But the more I wat­ched the club and the more I read about the club and the more I dis­co­ver­ed the rich histo­ry of the club … I don’t know, the­re was just some­thing about the club, it’s back­ground, it’s crest, it’s ups and downs. I couldn’t put my fin­ger on it but I was get­ting more and more atta­ched with each match I wat­ched.

And then the last match of the sea­son, well, that sea­led the deal for me. Every VfB sup­port­er remem­bers the match. Sea­son on the line, giving up an ear­ly goal, the con­stant move­ment of the table. Away at Pader­born. I was able to watch the second half of the game and when Gin­c­zek scored the goal (side­bar — he also scored the goal in the only VfB game I’ve been lucky enough to attend, the 1:1 draw against HSV in 2018!) that would not only win the match but also save the sea­son, the cele­bra­ti­ons by the play­ers and tra­vel­ling sup­port­ers was just … ins­a­ne. It was nuts. Yes, I knew the club was safe, but I couldn’t figu­re out why the fans, the play­ers, the coa­ches, just ever­yo­ne, was going bana­nas, why ever­yo­ne was so, so, so hap­py. They ended up 14th! Just two points abo­ve direct rele­ga­ti­on and peo­p­le were acting like they had won the Cham­pi­ons League! In the Sta­tes, that kind of finish gets ever­yo­ne fired! But here, on that day, the play­ers and sup­port­ers were deli­rious­ly hap­py. I couldn’t figu­re it out (sad­ly, I now know why ever­yo­ne was so hap­py, lol) but that was it, I was hoo­ked.

So I dived in, beca­me a mem­ber, bought kits and scar­ves and baby kits for my one year old and spent every weekend mor­ning wat­ching Zor­ni­ger lead the team to … well … yeah. We all know that sto­ry, too! 2017–2018 tes­ted my sup­port as I had to purcha­se VfBtv and wait on a two or three hour delay for them to post the video, but I stuck with it, and through the ups and downs (and downs), it’s been a blast.

Long sto­ry, but sin­ce 2015, I’ve been a mem­ber of the club, I catch every match I can, and I own way, way, way too many jer­seys!

Obvious­ly when VfB games kick off at 3.30 pm on a satur­day, it is still ear­ly mor­ning in the Sta­tes. How hard is it to fol­low the Bun­des­li­ga in the US? How’s the TV covera­ge?

Yeah, the ear­ly mor­ning covera­ge is bru­tal. But I have it easier than most. Whe­re I live, we are six hours behind Ger­ma­ny. But I have some fri­ends who sup­port VfB who are seven hours behind. Jeff and Aus­tin, the co-hosts on the pod­cast, live in Cali­for­nia, so if they want to watch their clubs they are nine hours behind! So for me, I can’t com­plain too much, but yeah, a 9:30am start does make it dif­fi­cult to have a Wei­hen­ste­pha­ner or Kolsh while wat­ching the match!

As to TV covera­ge, though, it’s got­ten a lot bet­ter. Like I said, 10 years ago, you couldn’t watch any­thing. Then around 2015, FOX Sports star­ted show­ing and strea­ming matches, so we could catch all the Bun­des­li­ga action, and sin­ce it was on Demand, you could catch the matches on our sche­du­le. Then they star­ted strea­ming all the 2.Bundesliga matches, as well, which was obvious­ly gre­at during the 2018 sea­son. Howe­ver, FOX Sports is no lon­ger hos­ting the Bun­des­li­ga as ESPN bought the rights to the league last sea­son. While they stream all the matches, and the qua­li­ty is fine, they don’t stream hard­ly any 2.Bundesliga matches, which to me is a shame, becau­se that league is going to be fan­ta­stic to watch this sea­son!

What’s the Bundesliga’s stan­ding with soc­cer fans in the Sta­tes and how well known is Stutt­gart?

That’s actual­ly a hard ques­ti­on becau­se I think the­re are two ans­wers, the gene­ral ans­wer and the spe­ci­fic ans­wer. By that I mean the gene­ral sports fan and the soc­cer fan.

If you’re tal­king about the gene­ral sports fan, ever­yo­ne knows Bay­ern and Dort­mund, but asi­de from tho­se two clubs, I’d say the league is not too well known. I mean, ever­yo­ne knows there’s a Ger­man league, but most Ame­ri­cans don’t know the clubs or the play­ers. Over here, in terms of soc­cer, the Pre­mier League is defi­ni­te­ly num­ber one, and I don’t think there’s real­ly a clo­se num­ber two. And while it’s a lot easier to watch Bun­des­li­ga matches than any of the other leagues like Serie A or La Liga (alt­hough ESPN is going to start broad­cas­ting La Liga matches this sea­son), it’s just not that well known on a gene­ral basis.

And gene­ral­ly spea­king, no one knows Stutt­gart at all.

The “soc­cer fan” knows about the Bun­des­li­ga, though. So, someone who fol­lows Pre­mier League or even MLS, yes, they’ll know about the Bun­des­li­ga. And in some are­as of the U.S. soc­cer is HUGE. Seat­tle. Cin­cin­na­ti. Chi­ca­go. Mil­wau­kee. Whe­re I live, in Cleve­land, we have two — two! — offi­ci­al Arse­nal sup­port­ers groups! I bring them up becau­se while they’re Arse­nal fans, they’re also soc­cer fans, so they know about the Bun­des­li­ga. Whe­ther it’s becau­se of Cham­pi­ons League play or Pre­mier League teams buy­ing up Bun­des­li­ga play­ers, there’s a lot of know­ledge of the Bun­des­li­ga as a who­le to soc­cer fans.

But in terms of VfB, even the­se fans don’t know much about the club. They know the­re is a club cal­led “VfB Stutt­gart” with the “red stri­pe,” but they don’t real­ly know any details about the club. What they know are most­ly two things — one, the num­ber of high qua­li­ty play­ers that have come through the club that have gone on to suc­cess for other clubs and two, the ico­nic brust­ring and emblem. Sounds sil­ly, but VfB’s “bran­ding” is pret­ty spot on in terms of reco­gni­ti­on. So if I walk into one of the Arse­nal pubs or the Spurs pub and I’m wea­ring my VfB kit, they’ll know who VfB is. But they won’t know much, if any detail, about the club.

That gets to ano­ther point, it’s a dream of mine and some of my fri­ends to start an OFC, but try­ing to find the requi­si­te 10 mem­bers, well, unless my wife and three child­ren can count, it’s pro­ba­b­ly not going to hap­pen, lol. And as far as I know, VfB sup­port­ers groups in the Sta­tes are rare and, to my know­ledge, non-exis­tent. You have pockets of VfB fans but we are always in groups of one or two … the amount of times I’ve had the who­le pub to mys­elf to watch a game by mys­elf is too many and too sad to count! But … I’ve heard rumors of a lar­ge num­ber of VfB fans in Mil­wau­kee and Chi­ca­go … hop­eful­ly some­day I can meet them!

Does it help noto­rie­ty that VfB has an Ita­li­an-Ame­ri­can mana­ger from New Jer­sey on the side­line?

No, not real­ly. I doubt that Leipzig’s new coach, who is an Ame­ri­can, will make anyo­ne in the U.S. pay atten­ti­on. So, no.

Now, when Chris­ti­an Puli­sic was play­ing for Dort­mund, that got people’s atten­ti­on. Even John Brooks has ear­ned some atten­ti­on. Put it this way, when Juli­an Green play­ed for VfB for tho­se 10 games in 2016–2017, he got way more publi­ci­ty than Pel­le­gri­no Mat­a­raz­zo has ever recei­ved! But for all three of the play­ers I just men­tio­ned, the reason why they got atten­ti­on and why that hel­ped the Bun­des­li­ga get atten­ti­on is that they were tied to the U.S.A. natio­nal team. In the U.S., for peo­p­le to pay atten­ti­on, you have to be asso­cia­ted with the natio­nal team. So unless Mata beco­mes the U.S.A. natio­nal team mana­ger, I don’t think his coa­ching VfB will get much atten­ti­on from Ame­ri­cans at all.

You pro­du­ce a pod­cast with other Bun­des­li­ga fans who fol­low Frei­burg, Köln and St. Pau­li cal­led VfB Stutt­gart Ame­ri­ca­na. How did that come about and what do you guys talk about in your epi­so­des?

I have to give cre­dit to Aus­tin, the Frei­burg fan, on this one. He lis­tens to a lot of pod­casts and star­ted lis­tening to some Ame­ri­can-based Bun­des­li­ga ones. He tur­ned me on to some and I star­ted lis­tening, and the­re are some real­ly good ones (Schal­ke­Me­ri­ca is the class of the group, in my opi­ni­on; Hey Ein­tracht is incre­di­bly infor­med; Never­ku­sen has a fan­ta­stic name and has the most impres­si­ve group of hosts from all over the world; It’s Not Easy Being Green is by far the most fun; and Tal­king Fuss­ball is so smooth and so know­led­geable). So after lis­tening to a few of them we star­ted thin­king, “hey, why not us?” Other than having no expe­ri­ence, no know­ledge, and no tech­ni­cal abili­ty, what is the­re to stop us?!

Oddly, the key for us was, well, the pan­de­mic. The­re. Was. Not­hing. To. Do. We were all bored. We were Zoom’ing tog­e­ther any­way (Aus­tin, Jeff, and Ian all live in Cali­for­nia, I live in Ohio, and we’ve all been best fri­ends for the last 30 years). So we thought, “Ok, why not?” If not­hing else, this would be a fun excu­se for the four of us to get tog­e­ther and talk and just hang out. So that’s whe­re the idea kind of star­ted.

The har­dest part tur­ned out try­ing to figu­re out our for­mat. We are all Bun­des­li­ga fans, so that part was easy. We’d talk about that. But Jeff is a die-hard Koln mem­ber. Aus­tin is a Frei­burg fan. I’m obvious­ly the Stutt­gart sup­port­er. Ian pre­fers the peren­ni­al 2.Bundesliga FCSP. We didn’t know what we should focus on … all the clubs? Just the Bun­des­li­ga clubs? Just the Baden-Würt­tem­berg clubs? One club? I final­ly took char­ge and said we’d focus on VfB, but we’d have seg­ments whe­re we would talk about other clubs.

Once we nai­led that down, the har­dest part is just sche­du­ling time to actual­ly do it (being on oppo­si­te ends of the coun­try doesn’t help!). Well, that and figu­ring out our sound. Yee­sh, it’s so awful.

But the easy part was tal­king about VfB! Our pod­cast is pret­ty basic and we start every epi­so­de with part one, a review of the pre­vious matchday’s result and then a pre­view of the upco­ming match. This part is important to point out though — we have zero exper­ti­se! As we warn peo­p­le at the begin­ning of each epi­so­de, we are unof­fi­ci­al, unin­for­med, and unpre­pared! Quite lite­ral­ly we are just a bunch of fans sit­ting around tal­king about the match. I mean, I read up on the club as much as I can on the inter­net and I think I’m some­what well-infor­med, and Aus­tin and Jeff watch all the matches, but if you’re coming to VfB Stutt­gart Ame­ri­ca­na for brea­king news, well, you’re going to be dis­ap­poin­ted. I’m not sel­ling the pod­cast very well, but I can honest­ly say that we add abso­lut­e­ly not­hing to the con­ver­sa­ti­on, lol.

Part two is whe­re we give our pre­dic­tions for the next week for VfB and the enti­re Bun­des­li­ga. We use the most recent bet­ting odds and try our best to pre­dict results. I’m proud to say we were all over .500 last sea­son, so may­be we do know a litt­le bit! It’s usual­ly during this part whe­re Jeff and Aus­tin get a few minu­tes to talk about their clubs, and con­side­ring how bad 1.FC Koln was last sea­son, this was a good chan­ce for Jeff to exer­cise some men­tal the­ra­py!

We usual­ly add in a “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” seg­ment in homage to my favo­ri­te movie and then a “What We Lear­ned” seg­ment whe­re we talk about some­thing com­ple­te­ly ran­dom we lear­ned during the broad­cast, but for the most part, we try to NOT take our­sel­ves too serious­ly, we try to remain posi­ti­ve and upbeat (thanks to @MartinPanik1893, @SailRacer, @robg485, and Bren­do for being foun­ding mem­bers of the Gre­at Lakes Brust­ring Brü­der … it’s our unof­fi­ci­al VfB sup­port group and they often talk me off the ledge and remind me not to post any­thing until the “24 Hour Rule” has expi­red and I’ve cal­med down so I can remain posi­ti­ve and upbeat!), and we just try to act like the three or four of us are sit­ting around the pub tal­king about the club — and the league — over a few bever­a­ges.

How is the feed­back from other Bun­des­li­ga fans in the Sta­tes or Eng­lish spea­king Stutt­gart fans in gene­ral?

Sho­ckin­gly posi­ti­ve! We deci­ded to do the pod­cast just as a way to have fun and figu­red if we had more than five lis­ten­ers it was becau­se someone acci­den­tal­ly tun­ed in. So it’s been awe­so­me to hear so many kind comm­ents from peo­p­le about how the pod­cast isn’t ter­ri­ble. It’s defi­ni­te­ly “raw” and of low-pro­duc­tion qua­li­ty, but it’s not hor­ri­ble. That’s a low goal to try to achie­ve, but hey, we’ll take it.

The most fun part is that we’ve found out that there’s a small com­mu­ni­ty of like-min­ded Bun­des­li­ga fans in the Sta­tes, and even though our clubs face-off twice a sea­son, they’ve all been incre­di­bly sup­port­i­ve. We’ve even done a few inter­views and tal­ked to a few fans of other clubs, and tho­se are always a blast, just to get a dif­fe­rent per­spec­ti­ve. At the end of the day, it’s pret­ty clear that what comes across is that we are just a bunch of fans, that we try to stay posi­ti­ve, and that we are try­ing to have fun.

Regar­ding this sea­son, what do you think of the new sig­nings and what is your pre­dic­tion for the cam­paign?

Any­thing you want to tell our rea­ders on eit­her side of the pond?

There’s so much more we could dive into, but this inter­view is alre­a­dy way, way too long and I’ve alre­a­dy was­ted way too much of your space, so just thanks in gene­ral to the VfB com­mu­ni­ty becau­se I don’t think you all rea­li­ze how vital you are for tho­se of us on this side of the Atlan­tic. Yes, we can try and trans­la­te BILD or Kicker or the local Stutt­gart news­pa­pers, but it’s just not the same as fol­lo­wing some of you on Twit­ter or Red­dit. Espe­ci­al­ly Red­dit as it’s an ama­zing resour­ce for Eng­lish spea­king fans who fol­low the club, and belie­ve me, it’s one of the best and most well-run forums for any Bun­des­li­ga club for tho­se of us who strugg­le with spea­king or rea­ding Ger­man. So thanks to all of you in Euro­pe for kee­ping the infor­ma­ti­on flowing.

Final­ly, to any rea­ders on the Ame­ri­can side of the pond, reach out to us! One of our favo­ri­te parts of the pod­cast is tal­king to other Ame­ri­can-based VfB fans, so if that’s you, get in touch. And who knows, if you hap­pen to live near Cleve­land, let’s start working on that Offi­ci­al Fan Club, eh?!

Thank you for the inter­view

Thanks so much for giving us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ram­ble on, it’s been a lot of fun!

Pho­to: © ima­go (Title: Mr May­er-Vor­fel­der, you have a fri­end in Penn­syl­va­nia)