By Billy the Dog McGraw.
Borussia as you will know, being educated fellows and not like those hearty roughs from down the Seven Sisters Road, is Latin. It means Prussia, which is the ancient state which came out of the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
These things are important, and not what you get on your ordinary Arsenal site where some jolly chaps think that Borussia is actually a suburb of Margate. In fact some of the locals in Kent are starting to wonder about all these people in red turning up and talking a stroll along the prom.
Because of course it isn’t. Which is why Borussia Dortmund v Borussia Mönchengladbach is not a local derby. Incidentally do you know who the most hated man is on the Borussia Mönchengladbach terraces?
It’s the guy who shouts, “Give us a B…”
Anyway, there’s Borussia Dortmund,Borussia Fulda,Borussia Mönchengladbach, Borussia Neunkirchen, Borussia Friedenstal, and Borussia Lindenthal-Hohenlind.
Borussia D launched itself on an unsuspecting Latin speaking populace in 1909 when a group of athletic young men got very unhappy with the local church team Trinity Youth, (Trinity Yoof in English). So they turned on Father Dewald, and speaking in the manner of Harry Enfield when sitting in a pub with Paul (this will mean nothing if you don’t watch old time British comedy TV on satellite, sorry) said “No!”
Or to be more literate, they blocked the door of the church in the style of Thomas A’Becket in TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Either way, you get the point. Unless you don’t.
The priest didn’t like the lads nipping down to the Auld Triangle (Zum Wildschütz in the native tongue), and there was multo aggitato.
In 1929 they decided to follow the Rangers approach to football and went bust, just about, by signing the wrong players.
They are the only publicly traded club on the German stock market and their supporters will have a wonderful time when they come to London, what with the pound being worth a Euro these days. For most Euro peoples in fact England is just about free. But that is for another day!
Being on the stock market however took Dortmund close to banks, and we all know what that means. Cocaine, heavy drinking, wild gambling and an imbecilic inability to count the change while freewheeling with everyone else’s money, and then telling us it was our fault.
So they had to sell the Westfalenstadion ground for 45 cents to the guy who runs the sweet shop outside. They had another bash at bankruptcy in 2005, with the shares that once cost €11 now worth two Flavian pobblebeads and a packet of smarties each.
An insurance company took over the stadium and they can average around 77,000 people a match. So the question is, how can a club that gets 77,000 people on average to each game go bust? Only a banker with cocaine up his nose could ever answer that question.
Here’s our likely team…
Szczesny
Sagna Koscielny, Mertesacker Santos
Song, Frimpong
Arteta
Gervinho van Persie Arshavin
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The question is how to play the midfield without Wilshere and Ramsey? I thought the Song/Frimpong combination worked when we saw it briefly, but we do also have Coquelin, who is highly rated in Untold Turrets.
Which takes us onto the back up team…
Fabianski, Jenkinson, Djourou, Gibbs, Ryo, Walcott, Park, Benayoun, Coquelin
Sadly Mrs Dog has forbidden me the chance to spend £83 trillion on getting to Margate so I shall watch it on TV in the sitting room, but Walter and Erik plus the rest of the Benelux group are there, in real life, and I do hope they will be doing the catering report, which as you will know, if a regular reader, is an important element in contemporary Untoldism.
Anything else you need to know?
PS: I noticed in the bookshop that there are a lot of copies of “Tottenham in The Champions League 2011/12 – a guide to the grounds” left on sale. Apparently they have now been reduced.
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I will try to experience the Bratwurst today Tony. I’m not sure yet about the Sauerkraut.
Do you have by any chance a health insurance policy for people who do such things for Untold?
Oh yes and if the young man who was standing in front of me in the queue at the game in Koln also wants to order a Bratwurst could he please take care that this time around he puts the mustard on his sandwich and on the Wurst and not spill it on the table so that the next person who comes there puts his arm down on the table and finds himself covered with mustard from the wrist to his elbow. Thank you. And the worst part was that my Arsenal jacket was dirty and I had to get it washed. Next time I will let The Dog loose on him. 😉
Counting the minutes at work until I can go 😉
Give me a B… LOL
If I may add that according to what I have heard that when Borrussia almost went bust the last time they decided to change their policy a bit. From then on they preferred to grow up their own players. And when they bought players they bought them rather young at a cheaper price. They didn’t went for big and shiny players at high cost anymore.
sounds a bit familiar to me.
Give us a B. I love it! Splendid witticism, you canine wag!
I love that combination but wenger should change arshavin with park.
Did the dog mean ‘Give us a BONIO’.
Loved the article but you forgot to mention one thing. When they went bust in 2005 they had to sell one of their best players (well he was sold in May 2006 I think). I mean Tommy Rosicky was great before all those injuries attacted him and he lost his confidence (which sometimes seem to come back and then disappear again sadly).
Oh and Jenkinson is not in Germany.
Walter I’m now really jealous of you 2 matches in row and real German Bratwurst (I love it) I haven’t had german sauerkraut but I have had Finnish/Russian one and that was OK.
Oh and OT Henri Lansbury has signed contract extension so he might be back next year (I would have been sad to see him go).
Any idea how many Arsenal fans will be there tonight, amongst the 77,000? Always impressed by our away fans, especially in Europe
Have they auctioned off Wengers chair?
The UEFA Gestapo decreed that Arsene Wenger had to stay and do 15 minutes ‘detention’ in the stand after the final whistle before he could rejoin his team. How absolutely ridiculous can these people get, what possible difference does it make after the game has finished, are they trying to humiliate him. Utterly disgraceful and disrespectful.
Someone seriously needs to take UEFA/FIFA to a court of law to curb their excesses.
Are we (Arsenal) becoming becoming too docile for our own good?
mick…….the EUFA gestapo are teaching him a lesson for the following effronteries:
1)Daring to run his team in a financially secure manner that wasn’t decided and approved by EUFA beforehand,
2)Daring to produce a great team from the grassroots and youth system,
3)Daring to be French and not surrender!
4)Daring to predict financial Football armeggadon before consulting with the Bank of England,
5)Daring to question the irrational and unpredictable EUFA sanctions for daring to question a FIFA referee,
6)Daring to be elegant,aloof and displaying Gallic shrugginess.
7)Finally, daring to take their minions at face value when they told him he could talk to his coach by cellphone…such a nerve!
This simply proves that EUFA is a knee-jerk reactionary shitload of pathetic sycophants and Platini platitude sucking ingrates….best summed up in the words of jimmy Greaves, the former Spuds ¨star¨ as being ¨old farts in velvet jackets¨.