Lessons for KPL administrators from Bundesliga

This week, I was part of a team of eight journalists from Africa taken on an extensive tour of football facilities in Germany to learn what the country’s sports administrators did to position Germany as a force to reckon with in world football, and to experience first-hand the passion and excitement that comes with attending top-flight European football league matches.

Upon arrival, I and my Kenyan colleague Torome Tirike were joined by six journalists from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa and together, we got to tour the cities of Leipzig, Leipzig is a city in the eastern Germany which is home to Germany’s first division Bundesliga team VfB Leipzig, the first national champions of Germany. We visited Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Hoffenheim where Bundesliga teams by the same names are based.

Our hosts and organisers of the tour also accorded us the opportunity to watch two Bundesliga matches -Hoffenheim’s 4-0 thrashing of Stuttgart last Saturday, and the 0-0 stalemate between hosts RB Leipzig and Schalke 04. The stadium experience provides a different feeling from what you experience when watching matches on TV.

We also had interviews with a number of star footballers in the Bundesliga, among them Schalke 04’s American midfielder James McKennie, Leipzig custodian Peter Gulasci from Hungary and Algerian goal-poacher Ishak Belfodil who scored twice for Hoffenheim against Stuttgart on Saturday.

In between, we attended a series of thought-provoking workshops with German football stakeholders, the highlight of which was a session with the legendary Lothar Matthaus who visited Kenya last year, and Hoffenheim chairman Peter Gorlich.

The tour organised by pay-TV channel StarTimes was an eye-opener and showed us that Kenyan Premier League administrators have a lot of ground to cover if our own football league is to achieve Bundesliga’s dizzying heights of success.

Like in Kenya, German football is headed by two main entities namely German Football Association (DFB) and German Football League (DFL), institutions that are directly comparable to Football Kenya Federation and the Kenya Premier League Limited respectively.

The German Football Association is the governing body of football in Germany and its main task is to manage the German national team (known as Die Mannschaft), Amateur Sports teams, Referees and Women football.

At the same time, DFL’s main role is to organise league football in the German top-tier league Bundesliga, Bundesliga 2 (second-tier league), DFL Supercup (or German Super Cup which is a one-off football match between winners of the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal (also known as German Cup, a knockout football cup competition held annually). The DFL also organises Bundesliga promotion/relegation play-offs.

The Bundesliga is the best-attended league in Europe, with an average attendance of 41,000 per match. Each game in the competition offers a stark contrast to the empty stadiums witnessed in 80 per cent of the matches in the Kenyan Premier League.

It also is the second biggest football league in the world in terms of revenue. What’s more, the 80,000-seater Allianz Arena, home to European giants Bayern Munich, ranks among the biggest match venues in Europe.

These successes in record attendance have mainly been brought by the breath-taking and exciting football menu on the cards. Without doubt, the Bundesliga also offers a sleek environment to the average fan complete with well-maintained pitches, secure facilities located in lively environments which entice hundreds of thousands of supporters to the stadiums each week.

The hospitality menu is also one to die for, with cakes, beers, beverages, burgers among other things at affordable cost. The seats in the terraces are also spaced out and well-marked that a fan has no qualms attending a game with his five-year-old son.

“What I like most about the Bundesliga is the infrastructure and passionate fans. Matches here record the most goals compared to all league competitions across Europe. The stadiums are also safe for families. We have good young players and international players from Asia, North and South America, and Africa playing here,” said Matthaus who captained West Germany to victory in the 1990 Fifa World Cup in Italy.

We also toured German football academies and got to watch how the next crop of German star footballers are nurtured. The investment involves modern computerised facilities and highly-qualified coaches, chefs, physiotherapists and psychologists.

“You cannot mix the basis of the club with the game (football) or business. We not only give the youth the opportunity to develop football but also social responsibilities,” Hoffenheim chairman Gorlich told us at the club’s academy.

There are many lessons Kenyan football administrators can learn from Germany to take the game to the next level.