Derek Rae

Köln-Dortmund live 🎙️ this Saturday with Owo alongside for expert analysis.
World feed: ESPN+, Sky UK & the usual 🌎 channels.
Always nice to be in the Domstadt all week ahead of the Topspiel.

Do you agree with Thomas Muller? 🤔

"It’s not spoken about in the office on a Monday morning," he said of North American football fandom to Kicker (translation via Derek Rae). "But the football bubble is not in fact so small. ... The people are interested in the game."

Good question especially for a freelancer. Different channels/companies book us at different times, sometimes several weeks or even months before. Others leave it quite late so it’s a lot of juggling prep & assignments.

Never because I make sure to plan well ahead often staying the night before in the city of the game :)

War noch nie bei einer Partie am Aachener-Tivoli aber glücklicherweise gibt‘s am Mittwoch ein Heimspiel gegen Schlusslicht Schweinfurt und so habe ich ein Ticket abgeholt. Ein neues Stadionerlebnis lohnt sich.

You too Jörg! 🙌

Müller: “However: in the playoffs our stadium was packed with 50,000 spectators.”

Müller: “They grew up with ice hockey, basketball & (American) football. The ranking of football is perhaps comparable to handball in Germany. Due to the topography in Canada, there are significantly fewer football pitches than ice hockey rinks.”

Müller: “But the football bubble is not in fact so small. In the stadia there’s euphoric atmosphere. The people are interested in the game. The rest of the population doesn’t know the football bubble at all. They have other topics & sports.”

Thomas Müller responding to a Kicker question about ⚽️ in North America. (In several parts.)
“You must separate 2 different things.
Football here still has no big significance in the life of the general population. It’s not spoken about in the office on a Monday morning.”

Kicker has itself a very good Nagelsmann interview in which he - amongst other things - gives his thoughts on World Cup squad selection. A lot of the basic criteria are not what you might think!

Thanks, Pia! Pleasure to be with you & @beveswelt.bsky.social :)

Just a brilliant day in FFM & spring weather for good measure.
Enjoyable win for Eintracht.
Thanks to everyone who came over to the Waldtribüne, a true #SGE matchday institution in Frankfurt.

Not everything in ⚽️ has to be about narrow advantage.
Personally hope Hearts go on & win the Scottish Premiership & Motherwell finish as high as possible.
Variety is good & as a Scot who spends a lot of spare time talking up our ⚽️ to non-Scots, a permanent duopoly is not fun.

🙏

Thrilling BVB-Bayern game. Very entertaining 2nd half in a loud stadium before 81,365.
11-pt gap at the top now.
Looking fwd to a day in the crowd in Frankfurt tomorrow - oh & will be a guest in the Waldtribüne with Pia & Beve if you want to come along!
@pia-ffm.bsky.social @beveswelt.bsky.social

Saturday coverage on ESPN+

Yes, sometimes we have to modify to make it more idiomatic in English

There are some similarities between Greater Manchester & the Ruhr

Very significant night for UK politics. Opposing the far right doesn’t mean just holding your nose and voting for a less bad Labour candidate.
Hannah Spencer’s speech 👏…& worth listening to in the USA too where you don’t have to accept establishment corporate Dems.

Seeing a lot of very nice posts from VfB fans about their Celtic counterparts & even calls for a fan friendship.
Proof that the fans at the other end need not be anyone’s enemy.

Tschäldig hat’s ordentlich gemacht, gelle? :)

Bayern could effectively end Dortmund's season with Klassiker win The biggest game of the Bundesliga is happening this weekend, with a win for Bayern in Der Klassiker would spark the end of Borussia Dortmund's season.

My Dortmund-Bayern thoughts ahead of Saturday for ESPN.
www.espn.com/soccer/story...

ESPN presents the Bundesliga's premier game: Der Klassiker – Saturday, February 28 Borussia Dortmund, currently second in the Bundesliga, welcomes league leaders FC Bayern München for the second leg of the 2025–26 season’s Der Klassiker – German football’s most intense rivalry – at ...

A busy Saturday! Coverage details here.
espnpressroom.com/us/press-rel...

Did the job in a fairly unspectacular way. But difficult part comes next round.

The Kicker headline is “The bitter elimination.”
“Dortmund goes under, 1:4 in Bergamo and fails in the playoffs.”

Bitter, bitter, bitter

Mann!!

Boah! 0:3

My opinion? Avoid Dortmund right now.