An Interview with Derek Rae

Derek Rae of ESPN was kind enough to speak to me at length about Ger­many and Ger­man foot­ball. If you have access to ESPN/ESPN Inter­na­tional, you may be accus­tomed to Rae’s com­men­tary for the Cham­pi­ons League, La Liga or even Ere­di­visie; there­fore, you might find that an inter­view of a foot­ball announcer who doesn’t announce Bun­desliga games a bit odd. How­ever, Derek Rae is flu­ent in Ger­man and is a self-described German-file.

It started for Derek with the 1974 World Cup held in West Ger­many, where he fell in love with foot­ball. For him that tour­na­ment was very Ger­man in a cul­tural sense and he found him­self gripped by the coun­try as well as the games. It was this tour­na­ment that he described as forc­ing his school­ing choice when it came to sec­ondary lan­guage between French and Ger­man. But rather than learn­ing the core and for­get­ting, as hap­pens with many Eng­lish speak­ers, he turned it into flu­ency that would help form a last­ing con­nec­tion with the coun­try. While his first visit to Ger­many was at age 12 to the port city of Ham­burg, he spent con­sid­er­ably more time in Ger­many as part of stu­dent exchange pro­grams from ages 16 to 18 on the East/West Ger­man bor­der in Hesse. The town was Wildeck-Hönebach and from the back yard of the house in which he resided he could see Com­mu­nist Germany.

Just to prove his “street-cred”, the con­ge­nial Scots­man named, after his beloved Aberdeen, the Region­aliga Sud club KSV Hes­sen Kas­sel as his club dur­ing his heady days in Ger­many. It’s a club he obvi­ously still holds great affin­ity for. He won’t name any Bun­desliga club as a favorite, but hav­ing sur­prised him­self in recount­ing that through his days he had been to almost every major sta­dium, he unabashedly named West­falen­sta­dion (or Sig­nal Iduna) as not only the best, but as the Cathe­dral of Ger­man foot­ball. And he pointed out that foot­ball mad sup­port­ers in the Ruhr region, with their dis­tinct sense of humor, were some of his favorites.

We spoke as he returned from ESPN’s stu­dios in Bris­tol, Ct. where he is cov­er­ing the Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup. Inter­na­tional foot­ball was the start­ing thread as the area we live in is abuzz about the US vic­tory over Spain. The dis­cus­sion turned to Michael Bradley of Borus­sia Mönchenglad­bach. I asked him what had hap­pened to the large num­ber of Amer­i­cans that had once made their home in the Ger­man sys­tem. He recounted the days when you could find an Amer­i­can at the odd Region­aliga match. Ger­many has had one of the loos­est for­eign player poli­cies of the major leagues for some time. Back in the days when the MLS was just start­ing and the US wasn’t quite estab­lished as a top 20 side, there were few options for Amer­i­cans in Europe. Ger­many was the biggest and best oppor­tu­nity at that time. But cul­tur­ally he admit­ted that it’s a dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion to make for many young play­ers with the long win­ters (a point I found funny com­ing from a fel­low New Eng­lan­der) and new lan­guage. These days, the entry for Amer­i­cans into Scot­land and Eng­land is much eas­ier as the Home Office has relaxed rules for foot­ballers, so nat­u­rally Amer­i­can play­ers are head­ing there, when pos­si­ble, due to obvi­ous cul­tural sim­i­lar­i­ties. Mean­while the emer­gence of the EPL as a global brand makes it dou­bly attrac­tive for Amer­i­can footballers.

We weren’t done with Glad­bach, as we dis­cussed how Ger­many could start to make inroads in Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tions. Remem­ber­ing the golden era of his Aberdeen side*, he reminded me of how the dom­i­nant teams of Europe in the 70’s and 80’s were Ger­man. While we remem­ber England’s 7 out of 8 Euro­pean Cups dur­ing that era, its easy to for­get that Ger­many won four (Bay­ern and Ham­burg), while three times they were the run­ners up to Eng­lish sides. Mean­while, other than Tot­ten­ham, Eng­land made lit­tle head­way out­side of the main tour­na­ment dur­ing that era. Glad­bach won two UEFA Cups and Frank­furt and Bayer also won one, while three other finals were lost by Ger­man sides. And in the Cup Win­ners Cup, Magde­burg and Ham­burg both won while Jena, Loko­mo­tiv Leipzig, Köln and For­tuna Dus­sel­dorf all lost finals.

*as a reminder to newer fans, Aberdeen had to defeat both Bay­ern Munich and Real Madrid to lift the Cup Winner’s Cup in 1983.

While appre­cia­tive of the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of all the leagues, he did lament on the lack of per­spec­tive of some new fans and sup­port­ers. He used a line that just blew me away, “I am always dis­ap­pointed when sup­port­ers think the league started when they dis­cov­ered it.” He sent a fan­tas­tic mes­sage to all new fans that EVERY team has a his­tory to tell. Some­times it’s time­less like Barcelona, some­times it’s old and grand like Mönchenglad­bach and some­times its a brief spark like Not­ting­ham Forest.

But when I asked about what it would take to regain some of that form for Ger­man sides, Rae was of the opin­ion that there was noth­ing they could, nor should do. While a team could spend exor­bi­tant amounts of money for Euro­pean glory, Dortmund’s dark days stand as a stark reminder that such a sce­nario can back­fire in a league that can’t com­pete cul­tur­ally with La Liga and Series A for the best South Amer­i­can tal­ent. He felt the reemer­gence of the Bun­desliga in Europe would be an organic process that may have well started this year with Werder Bre­men. And the new found strength of East­ern Europe at the inter­na­tional level could help the league that is best at scout­ing and cul­ti­vat­ing its talent.

Finally we turned to the sea­son past and sea­son to come. While he couldn’t dis­count Wolfsburg’s improb­a­ble run, he felt that Hoffenheim’s abil­ity to make us believe they could do the impos­si­ble for so long was a richer story in the long run. As for the most sur­pris­ing player, he quickly pointed out Zvjez­dan Mis­i­movi?. He couldn’t empha­size more the amaz­ing dif­fer­ence one player had made to a side, turn­ing a solid team into cham­pi­ons; whereas a year ear­lier he had been part of rel­e­ga­tion. Rae has obvi­ous respect for Felix Mag­ath and para­phrased the manager’s assess­ment that some­times the pieces just fit. In Misimovi?’s case the fit was other-worldly.

As for next year, Ribery is a very inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tion to him. He could under­stand Bay­ern cash­ing in while they can for the French play­maker, espe­cially while the money is “silly”; how­ever, he didn’t feel that he was replace­able. Play­ers like Ribery rarely are. So while he feels that Bay­ern will con­tend for the title, much will ride on how the club con­ducts itself around the Ribery sell. But Ribery wasn’t the only con­cern for him, when it came to Bay­ern. He feels that Van Gaal, while a great coach, is a polar­iz­ing fig­ure and could back­fire on Bay­ern, so he doesn’t think Bay­ern are odds on favorites. He feels that Schalke along with one other will be there to con­tend with Bay­ern. He was inter­ested in how Wolfs­burg would come along next year, but he didn’t seem overly opti­mistic with their chances. And finally when I asked about Marin’s move to Bre­men, he said that while Diego leaves a huge hole to fill, that Marin has the char­ac­ter to step up to the chal­lenge. It just may take more than a year.

I want to thank my good friend Eddie Emmanuel, a Lazio sup­porter, for help­ing con­nect an Aberdeen and Spurs sup­porter to talk about Ger­man foot­ball. It’s a grand old sport with a rich tapestry.

Tagged as: Derek Rae, ESPN, Franck Ribery, KSV Hessen Kassel, Misomovic, Signal Iduna, USMNT