-
Let’s agree to disagree on that one. Leipzig is and was a football backwater riddled with washed up clubs.
As for Hansa Rostock and Dynamo Dresden having a fab culture worries me. They’re arguably the single most racist fans that have ever set foot on a football terrace. I’ve been there both in the mid 90s and still wish to this day that I hadn’t.
jaw-
I think Lok Leipzig and Hallescher FC fans might try and vie for that title...
Anyway, I like Leipzig as a city and it has a really good football culture that's buried a few leagues down.
I guess the main issue with RB is that in many ways, Germany gets a lot right in terms of football culture, but they are an annoyingly successful example of commercialised, corporatised football which is where modern football is going. But if you like the plastic flags on seats thing more than cheap beer and terraces I guess it's not a problem.
tbc
Wolfsburg and Leverkusen are very long-standing exceptions to a rule that was universally accepted to be a good thing. Letting another team get around it shows things are going in the wrong direction.
There was a great footballing tradition in Leipzig, with Lokomotive Leipzig having reached the semi finals of the UEFA Cup (losing to Spurs having beaten Ipswich), and the final of the Cup Winners Cup, and their rivalry with Chemie Leipzig.
Both were in the top East German division but then got shafted after reunification, and both ended up going bust.
It's a typical story for teams in former East Germany, and it's especially bitter for the clubs that have managed to survive, and maintain a real fan culture - Energie Cottbus, Union Berlin, Hansa Rostock, Dynamo Dresden - that the only team from the East that has achieved some measure of success in the last few years is a soulless corporate entity.