February 7, 2025: Sandhausen, Germany
SV Sandhausen 1, Armenia Bielefeld 0
Can they do it on a freezing night in Sandhausen?
I don’t know if that hackneyed analogy is fair to Sandhausen, or even Stoke, but I couldn’t help but think of it as I launched a brief football-centric European tour on the same Friday night I arrived in Germany.
Nothing like a very brisk breeze and third-division night football to fend off the specter of jet lag — and it worked.
The clubs are flying lower than they are used to: both were relegated from the 2. Bundesliga in 2023, though Bielefeld’s fall was more spectacular, having fallen out of the top division only a year earlier.
For Sandhausen, it marked the end of an 11-year run in the second league, during which they — remarkably — never finished higher than 10th.
Even the third division is a bit of a demographic stretch for Sandhausen, which has only 15,000 or so residents, though it’s only a 15-minute bus ride from Heidelberg. 1 Unless the bus is slowed down picking up a standing-room-only pack of matchgoers.
Sandhausen’s stadium reflects their history as scrappers, with an erector-set vibe and a bit of a hodgepodge, built a little-bit-at-a-time feel.
Plenty of room now for 4,518 fans, a fair number of whom made the 350 km journey from Bielefeld.
The Sandhausen setup puts the ultra groups side-by-side in the same end for easily comparable choreography, songs, chants, and pyro displays (to the repeated dismay of the stadium PA announcer). 2 “It’s unsportsmanlike, it’s dangerous and it costs your club money.”
Both organized sets of fans were loud and the Bielefelders literally never stopped singing or chanting.
But the atmosphere for the game as a whole was kind of unbalanced.
The side-by-side supporters groups , and their choreo, and their songs, were creating their own weather, separate from tall the action on the field.
The rest of the fans were pretty quiet — surprisingly so. The game may not have been the soccer equivalent of a Rembrandt painting, but both teams played hard, and there was plenty of tension in the final minutes as Bielefeld poured it on, forcing home keeper David Richter to make some acrobatic saves, boosted by a dramatic goal line clearance from defender Jakob Lewald in the 89th or 90th minute, and the threat of a goalie goal in added time. 3 Bielefeld keeper Jonas Kersken headed it wide for a goal kick.
I didn’t feel that tension in the stands around me, or even among the ultras, who followed their own script.
The game itself was tilted largely in Bielefeld’s way, but they couldn’t get anything past Sandhausen’s keeper, and the hosts snuck ahead midway through the half with a set-piece the Bielefeld keeper could only save once, into the post where it ricocheted back for Marco Schikora to put his own rebound into the goal.
Quiet Riot: I’m glad Sandhausen scored, because I learned that their goal song is “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Too good to check: Sandhausen’s mascot may be … a skunk? That’s what it looked like to me.
Things I didn’t know ’til later: Keeper Richter made his debut for Sandhausen after coming over in the winter transfer window from Osnabruck, where he had lost his starting position.
Sandhausen hadn’t won since November, snapping the eight-game winless streak that cost previous coach Sreto Ristic his job. Before the game started, I’d have said Sandhausen was dangerously close to the relegation places, and Bielefeld sniffing at promotion, but the league is so tight they ended up closer to each other than the places offering a 3.Liga exit in either direction.
Game writeup from Bielefeld here and from Sandhausen here. (Auf Deutsch)
A game summary is here.