FREIBURG, Germany (AP) – From a corner office of Freiburg’s homely stadium, club chairman Fritz Keller gazes over one of the loveliest views in football. Autumn’s reds, browns and golds streak the surrounding Black Forest. Buzzards wheel in the air above.
But from a football business perspective, this beauty is sterile desert. Black Forest boars make for fine stews, but they don’t buy tickets to games. Thick woods aren’t good places to find young players who could become football’s next superstars. Nature lovers will adore the woodland city’s tinkling waterways where herons fish. But in the increasingly expensive business of football, it is far easier to bag sponsors and revenue in thickly populated urban and industrial areas like Dortmund and Munich.
No accident, therefore, that those cities are home to Germany’s biggest teams. Freiburg plays in the same Bundesliga as those giants. But because it is landlocked in southwest Germany, hemmed in by the Black Forest to the east, France to the west and Switzerland to the south, the club isn’t in the same league financially and never will be. Freiburg executives accept that fact but also worry that no matter how hard they try, the gap between the haves and have-nots of football seems only to grow.
“This is the end of the world,” Keller said of his spectacular vista, “but it’s a nice end.”
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