By Michael Lachman
Everything was prepared for a big Berlin football festival. The weather was at its best, Makkabi and Sparta (3:1 aet) fought a worthy cup fight on the lawn of the Mommsen Stadium and 4,600 fans provided a huge crowd. Annoying that not all fans were able to experience the kick-off for the state cup final live in the stadium.
Because all around the stadium in Eichkamp there was pure chaos. The main access for car traffic via Harbigstrasse was hopelessly congested.
Police officers and stewards were exposed to displeasure – including mine. Parking? Barely available! After 20 minutes of searching, I was lucky to be able to park my car somewhere near Heerstrasse.
For those who had made it to the hopelessly congested entrance after a long walk, they had to wait. A security lady explained to me that the queue of football fans was more than 50 meters long.
“The tickets purchased online must be scanned at the entrance,” she said. “Due to the solar radiation, however, the scanners proved to be vulnerable and could not always read the barcode immediately.”
It probably wasn’t possible to start the game 15 minutes later either, since all the state cup finals were shown in three time windows as a conference on TV on the so-called “final day of the amateurs”. On the one hand, it’s nice for the kickers to have a large stage across Germany. On the other hand, it was annoying for the fans who were still standing and missed Sparta’s opening goal.
Once again it was shown that Berlin is not even third-rate when it comes to the stadium issue. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Mommsenstadion, Poststadion, Stadion Lichterfelde or Jahn-Sportpark: the parking situation is more than inadequate.
Perhaps the Berliner Verband should think about the stadium in the Sportforum as the final venue. At least there would be enough parking space.