One more week until the start of the next season of the second Bundesliga. As usual, the perfect Saturday for the season opener - and like last year, the opponent was Stoke City. Last year The men in brown and white won 4-2 and it was a terrible season. This time the result was 2-0 and I have no idea what that means...
Stoke City FC played surprisingly hard for a friendly, but maybe it was just English toughness. In any case, the FC St. Pauli players practiced verbal counter-pressing and the referee handed out yellow cards. It's also rarely seen at a friendly game.
Goals were scored by annual newcomer Mats Møller Dæhli and Jan-Marc Schneider. Both goals came in the much better second half. At least 15311 spectators wanted to see the game and some of them spread atmospheric anticipation for the first home game of the new season. There were also a few million raindrops that really wanted to be there and arrived on time for kick-off.
The most important thing before the game was the reference to the anti-racist parade in Hamburg "We'll come united" on September 29th - it's best to note it in your calendar now.
The most important thing about the game is probably that Ryō Miyaichi was used and he changed his shirt number. In Japan, the 4 and 9 bring bad luck individually and together. Ryō has really had enough of that over the last few years and has now switched from 13 to 12. Of course, 6 is a lucky number - so let's get started...
Oh yes: if it's a bad season, it'll probably be my fault: the gallery here has 13 pictures...
