Bundesliga: St. Pauli are promoted and the Browns celebrate in style | German ultra-left club that has several Argentine fans (Platense).

From Hamburg

It’s 10:20 on Sunday in Hamburg. Jairo drinks beer at the Domshanke bar. He arrived early to hang the flag. “Argentina is brown and white,” it is written in German. Almost 20 years ago, a group of Platens fans were looking for chromatic empathy in other parts of the world and found St. Pauli in this port city. They started following him, gained a following and founded an overseas fan club that has been up early on weekends with the second division of the Bundesliga ever since. But today is different: Jairo is drinking beer outside a stadium, more than 11,000 kilometers from his home, because other fans like him made fools of themselves and paid him for a ticket. And if all goes well this Sunday, St. Pauli will be promoted and will either win or draw.

“I didn’t expect it. When my friends on the court told me about it, I thought it was a joke. They took the points from the stadium and exchanged them for silver, for a deposit that they will give you when you return them. Thanks to this, as well with something extra that someone put in, I got a ticket,” he says. Page 12

one of the leaders of Piratas del Sur, which calls itself “the only official fan club in Argentina” of a specific German team. In recent days, he slept on the sofa of his friends who hosted him. They nearly had a heart attack on Saturday night when first in the table – KSV Holstein, now second – narrowly beat third – Düsseldorf – leaving St Pauli in direct promotion without a game. He wants it to happen on the field. He wants to be able to shout it. That’s why he comes to the bar early, hangs the flag and banishes the nerves “early” early with his people: Argentines, Uruguayans, Spaniards, Poles; fans from all over the world who wear brown jackets.

There are more and less lucky ones. Let’s try our luck like the Peruvian fan who takes the train from Berlin without a ticket. Or the one from Lomas de Zamora, but who has lived in Barcelona for many years and also believes that resale will give him a ticket to a historic day. He still doesn’t know it in the bar, but he will have to watch almost the entire 3-1 win against Osnabrück from the sidelines, which brought in a fairly active fan base despite no longer having a chance of avoiding relegation.

While the Hamburg team made headlines in the final decades of the last century for its anti-fascist and anti-racist fight against sexism and homophobia, its flags resonate much more strongly in struggling Germany. Political rhetoric on immigration has recently faltered due to the success of the far-right AfD party, which is gaining followers and is seen as the winner of the upcoming European Parliament elections, as well as communal and regional elections in the Federal Republic. . With more than 22 million immigrants and more refugees than any other European country, the country appears to be on the path to reinventing this tradition with open arms.

“I know people from different countries who suffer from some kind of discrimination, who are, for example, looked down on for speaking German with a slight accent. But here in Hamburg, fortunately, this does not happen, or happens less often.” because it is a port city used for migrants and because you have St. Pauli which struggles with this position. The speaker is Marina, an Argentinean who has been living in the area for five years, who, in a conversation with this newspaper, says that when she met the club, she first of all liked it for its left-wing political positions.

In fact, St. Pauli was the club that promoted the “Refugees Welcome” campaign (and organized a tournament for them) and was also the first team in the country to ban any fascist or far-right activities. “An antidote for people disillusioned with empty and commercial football,” German journalist Uli Hesse once defined. A far cry from the wealth shown in recent days by emerging champions Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. This morning in the Domshanke bar this is noticeable: there is enough space for everyone, or, as one of the stadium stands says, “not a single person is an illegal immigrant.”

80 minutes or something like that. Jairo has been crying for some time now, and although the opponents have just scored a penalty, St. Pauli is already the leader and one of the two new teams that will play in the 24/25 season in the first division. The stadium doors open and the Lomas fan and thousands of others left outside without entry can celebrate the occasion properly. In a few minutes they will be jumping around the playing field along with fans from all stands and players, organizing the biggest celebration in recent memory. It’s just football, but it feels like something more: a mockery of the advancing right, a hint of rising fascism, a hint of a sad future.

After all, Ewald Lienen, a former football player and the memorable sports director of the club founded in 1910, has already spoken about this: “Democracy is actively living here with all the ensuing consequences. Anyone who doesn’t understand this doesn’t understand St. Pauli.”