Hamburger SV this month sealed promotion back to the Bundesliga, after being out of the top division since their relegation in 2018. It’s huge for the city and fans and provides some hope, even if small, that HSV can one day get back to their glorious past.
The German club have a lot in common with Sunderland, who are trying to clinch their own promotion via the play-offs. Both have a successful history and both are integral to their port cities, becoming almost like a religion for their followers.
Hamburger Morgenpost have an article in their Friday edition about what football means to port cities, and to pick one out as a comparison they’ve chosen Sunderland.
Now, it’s certainly not all rainbows, with it being made clear how tough life can be for people who live in such areas. As Hamburger Morgenpost explained: ‘Some clubs have the status of a substitute religion, and nowhere did I become more aware of this than during a visit to Sunderland. Once home to shipyards and coal, the port city in northeast England is today, above all, depressing. One in three children lives in poverty. What remains of its former glory is the Association Football Club, whose arena is truly called the “Stadium of Light.”‘
Despite there being no hiding away from Sunderland’s problems as a city, there’s a clear fondness for the place which shines through in Hamburger Morgenpost’s piece, with the writer seemingly feeling that there’s many comparisons to be made with areas of Hamburg.
Regarding the glorious midweek match which takes Sunderland to the play-off final, Hamburger Morgenpost go all poetic, and we’ll you with that: ‘When the camera showed the stands shortly before the end of the semi-final, you could see spectators on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Men burying their faces in their hands. Nail-biters. Desperate people. A woman wept as if she were at a funeral. Then: an equaliser in the final seconds of stoppage time! The camera shook because the stadium shook. Mass hysteria. The presenter of the club’s own online channel, where I was watching the game, descended into a mixture of screaming, moaning, and babbling. This wasn’t a bottle of champagne that had been shaken for seven years. This was every ship’s boiler ever built in Sunderland blowing its valves off in an instant.’
There’s going to be a few extra fans cheering the Mackems on in that final…
