SV Wehen Wiesbaden vs. SV Sandhausen

On a Saturday in September, Tina spent most of the day in Kaiserslautern while she was attending a church  Relief Society event.  That left me with the children.  The boys have been wanting to see a real German soccer game so I took them to see SV Wehen Wiesbaden versus SV Sandhausen (SV stands for Sportverein -- "Sports Association" or "Sports Club").

Like most American sports, German soccer is organized into leagues.  The highest level is called the Fußball-Bundesliga.  The most famous (and, by far, the most successful) team in the German Bundesliga is FC Bayern München.  The Bundesliga is different from American professional sports leagues in an important way -- it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the 2nd Bundesliga.  In this system, the bottom two teams in the Bundesliga are automatically relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga for the following season while the top two teams from the 2nd Bundesliga are automatically promoted to the Bundesliga (again, for the following season).  The team that finishes third from the bottom in the Bundesliga plays a two-legged playoff with the third-place team of the 2nd Bundesliga; the winner plays the next season in the Bundesliga.  This system of promotion and relegation is designed to ensure that noncompetitive teams do not remain at the highest levels of the sport for 18 consecutive losing seasons (take notice, Pittsburgh Pirates).

The 3rd Bundesliga sits underneath the 2nd Bundesliga and then the regional club teams (Regionalliga) lie underneath the 3rd Bundesliga.  Both of these leagues have promotion and relegation systems (teams from the Regionalliga face relegation to the Oberliga).  Some of the teams in the 3rd Bunesliga consist of reserve players for larger teams in the Bundesliga (for example, Bayern München II plays in the 3rd Bundesliga).  Reserve teams are not eligible for promotion to the 2nd Bundesliga.  When the 3rd Bundesliga began operating in 2008, it replaced the Regionalliga as the 3rd tier of German professional soccer.

SV Wehen (as it was then called) played in the lower German leagues for decades before finally being promoted to the third tier Regionalliga in the late 1980s (this was before the current third tier existed).  In 2002, SV Wehen finished a respectable 6th in its Regionalliga.  In 2005 and 2006, SV Wehen finished 3rd but did not get promoted to the 2nd Bundesliga either year.  Finally, at the conclusion of the 2006-07 season, SV Wehen finished first in its league and was promoted to the 2nd Bundesliga.  For the 2007-08 season, SV Wehen started playing its games at the brand new Brita-Arena in Wiesbaden.  Since future home games would be in Wiesbaden, the team changed it name to SV Wehen Wiesbaden.

The rebranded SV Wehen Wiesbaden finished 8th its first year in the 2nd Bundesliga (2007-08) but the following year (2008-09), Wehen finished 18th and was relegated back to the third tier of the German soccer leagues (the 3rd Bundesliga) for the 2009-10 season.  Wehen remains in the 3rd Bundesliga for the 2010-11 season.

The game we went to see was SV Wehen Wiesbaden vs. SV Sandhausen.  The team offers a family ticket that is good for up to four people.  It only costs nine Euros.  When I showed up to buy the family ticket, there was a man standing outside the box office selling a family ticket for five Euros (he had received it as a no-cost promotional ticket) so I bought that from him and saved four Euros.

The stadium had lots of empty seats -- there were entire sections that were empty.  Whatever local buzz might have existed in 2007 (when the team opened a new stadium and simultaneously qualified for entrance into the 2nd Bundesliga) had long since disappeared.  Although still considered professional soccer, the quality of play was noticeably different from the World Cup games that I watched this past summer.  Fortunately, the boys didn't seem to notice or care.

We got bratwursts at halftime and SV Wehen Wiesbaden scored two second half goals to win 2-0.  Baby Sara enjoyed it so much she slept through the entire second half.

Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of our trip to the soccer game because the camera was in the States for service.  The camera had started putting a black spot on many of the photos that we were taking so I sent it back to Canon for repair.  Fortunately, it was still covered by the factory warranty so the repairs were free.