The Potsdam Royals’ preparations for the season are slowly picking up speed, albeit under difficult conditions. The football runner-up has to find a new home ground. There is also no fixed training ground.
No fixed training ground, no certainty about the venue in league operations. This is the complicated situation in which the Potsdam Royals footballers are currently. The uncertainties are all the more astonishing when you consider the importance of football in this country.
US sport has now also established itself in Germany and is the second most popular TV sport. In the highest German football competition, the German Football League (GFL), the Royals took second place in the previous season and only lost in the Final Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns. Last year, the people of Potsdam regularly attracted more than 1,000 spectators to their games in the Luftschiffhafen stadium.
A highlight for life
An NFL game will take place on German soil for the first time in Munich on Sunday. But the American football stars have visited Germany before, in Berlin in the early 1990s. By Friedrich Roesslermore
“The football teams have television rights”
However, this is now being renovated, so the team has to look around for alternatives. But there aren’t that many in the Brandenburg state capital, only the Karl Liebknecht Stadium would actually come into question, says Eberhard von Lobenstein, Marketing Manager for the Royals. However, the two football clubs are already in the arena, which can seat up to 10,700 spectators Babelsberg 03 as well as Turbine Potsdam resident. Talks are now in progress with the clubs and local political representatives.
“It’s about who plays there and when,” explains von Lobenstein. “Of course, the football teams have television rights, and that has always been a point of discussion, but right now it’s mainly about the money, about the release of funds so that the whole thing works in cooperation with two football clubs and a football club. And there the budgets have not yet been passed, the release is not 100 percent there yet.” However, von Lobenstein is optimistic “that we can do it”.
The conductor of the Potsdam Royals
The Potsdam Royals are still undefeated this season and are now in the semi-finals of the German Football League. A young quarterback from America is primarily responsible for the success on the offensive.more
“Embarrassing for the state capital Potsdam”
After all, the season doesn’t start until May. However, you have to train beforehand, and there is also uncertainty in the club when it comes to the practice area. In the past, players had to change training grounds every week.
It will probably come down to the sports field at Kirchsteigfeld, says coach Michael Vogt. But this is also used by several Potsdam sports clubs. It’s correspondingly cramped. “We are working with the city on alternatives,” says Vogt. “But they’re rare. And it’s not just us footballers, but many clubs in Potsdam that have training opportunities that are very, very rare – if not non-existent.”
Vogt finds this state of limbo of a first division team “not nice”, even “a bit embarrassing for the state capital Potsdam”. But the footballers are used to it. “It’s the same every year”.
The football runner-up is now waiting for solutions from Potsdam City Hall.
With material by Matthias Gindorf.
Broadcast: Antenne Brandenburg, February 6th, 2023, 1 p.m
