The referee blows the final whistle. Magdeburg have just gained promotion to the second tier of the German Bundesliga football league after beating Fortuna Cologne 2-0. A roar erupts in the stadium. Fans are jumping up and down in the stalls.
“Now there’s no stopping them!” cries Patrick Rieben. “The game’s over, the fans are storming the pitch!”
Rieben’s job is to make these scenes of jubilation and despair come alive for blind and visually impaired football fans.
With him in the stand are Torsten Kuehlhorn, Stephen Leuschner, Jonas Junker, Martin Lechelt and Jerome Haack - all unpaid volunteer commentators at this match in the third tier of the Bundesliga.
The men take turns to pass around a microphone, and their commentaries are relayed to fans dotted around the stadium in central Germany through individual headsets.
At higher levels in the Bundesliga, German football clubs have to pay for audio commentators. But in the third division, the commentary is all done by volunteers.
Commentators have to keep their listeners informed not only about the state of play on the pitch, but also about what is going on in the stands and at the edge of the pitch.
Magdeburg has a reputation for catering well for people with disabilities. During its days in the regional league, the club attracted meagre crowds and little media interest. But when it issued a special invitation to wheelchair users, many became firm fans.
For the promotion match, various donors paid for tickets for 3,000 disabled people. “This is a first for German football,” says Gerald Altmann, who organises the club’s volunteers.
Twenty blind and visually impaired fans were able to listen in to the commentary. One of them is Henning Krause, who has been a fan of the club since it was part of the former communist East Germany, more than a quarter of a century ago.
When he started to lose his sight because of a progressive illness, he began staying at home more and stopped going to matches. But now he is back in the stands with his friend Astrid Mertens, who is also visually impaired, following the game live.
“It’s great. The lads do it really well,” he says in praise of the commentators, revelling in the fact that he can experience the atmosphere in the stadium once more.
The idea was introduced to Magdeburg by Soeren Thuemler, a fan who also happened to work as a radio journalist. He had spotted commentators at work during a match at first-tier Bundesliga club Wolfsburg. “I thought to myself, that’s something for us,” he says.
The club was keen, but close to 10,000 dollars was needed to fund the equipment. The Magdeburg fan club stumped up more than half, and a charity provided the balance.
Thuemler started out doing the commentaries on his own - hard work for the vocal cords, given the background noise. He then sought help from journalism students.
The current cohort of commentators plan to continue working on an honorary basis, even though the team is now in the second Bundesliga. In return for their efforts, they get free entry to the games and access to the press area.
Training takes place once a year, and in the autumn there is a gathering with other clubs in the region. – DPA
ENJOYING: A blind football fan listens to commentary provided by his club Magdeburg. He also wears a symbol to show that he is visually impaired.
