Interview with St. Pauli Football Club

Steven Vogel of The Reference Council recently conducted an interview and article regarding the St. Pauli Football Club, one of Europe’s most notorious, exciting, genuine and yet most romanticized football clubs. The interview goes through all the interesting points about the neighborhood and the club, how the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Anarchists to Advertising Agencies played a role in this Cult Club. Definitely an interesting a great read. The piece in its entirety can be found here.

In the early ’90s, the media in Germany started to work on the Cult-image of the club, especially by focusing on the punk part of the fan-base. International artists such as Asian Dub Foundation have often worn the unofficial Skull and Crossbones logo and the team’s brown and white football jerseys. Turbonegro recorded a special version of their song “I Got Erection” with re-worked German lyrics for St Pauli. Bad Religion played a charity match against St. Pauli’s third team in 2000.

KMFDM front man and Hamburg native Sascha Konietzko is a recognizable St. Pauli fan, even at one point placing a huge picture of a fist smashing a swastika on his band’s main page with the caption “St. Pauli Fans Gegen Rechts!” (St. Pauli fans against the right-wing) underneath it.

While the team played in Germany’s second football division home fixtures at the Millerntor used to average greater attendance than any other team in that division, and often exceeded turnouts for second division teams. St. Pauli can also boast more season ticket holders than many first-division teams. One study recently estimated that the team has roughly 11 million fans throughout Germany, making the club one of the most widely recognized German sides. There are about 200 registered fan clubs, many of them outside Germany….