Today I am watching a game in German Tier V. I count the attendance at just over 80. There is no seating apart from a couple of stepped terraces on two sides, the other two sides are forest. There is a lovely little bar, a friendly guy selling sausages, and a kiosk with a lady selling ice creams. Which is a lot more than I expected! For comparison, Tier V in England includes Carlisle Utd (cap 19,000) Forest Green Rovers (cap 5,000), and Yeovil Town (cap 9,500).
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but the effect of regionalisation has a massive influence on any attempt to directly compare the standard of football in any particular Tier of football with the equivalent Tier in another country. Comparing England with Germany, for instance;
Tier IV
England 24 teams, Germany 55 teams
Tier V
England 24 teams, Germany 242 teams
Tier VI
England 48 teams, Germany 390 teams
(Exact numbers in Germany may fluctuate).
You can see, that in a very blunt statistical sense, if comparing individual clubs, it would make more sense to draw comparisons between Germany IV and England VI, than between the equivalent tiers directly. In Germany:
Tier IV to Tier III : 4 teams are promoted from 5 divisions; only 2 of the 5 regional winners gain promotion automatically, plus 1 based on rotation, and 1 via playoff.
Promotion & relegation below Tier IV is complicated by the fact that the individual states (apart from Bavaria) run their own internal league system with multiple divisions.
So taking the case of Hennef 05, who I am watching today:
Tier IV consists of 5 region leagues:
The tier IV Region in which Hennef lies (Regionalliga West) is subdivided into 3 state associations: Westphalia, Niederrhein, & Mittelrhein (in which Hennef play).
Westphalia has 2 promotion spots, Niederrhein & Mittelrhein have 1 each.
One consequence of regionalisation, is of course, that there is always more chance of relegation than there is of promotion. A quick glance at the table shows that neither club today has anything to play for: Hennef are safe, Weiden are down.
The entire pyramid system is explained very well here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_football_league_system
Speaking very broadly, as an outsider, the advantage of the German pyramid is the extent of community involvement with each club, which feels, subjectively, much higher than in England, and is very positive and heartwarming. On the other hand, of course, the actual standard of football is slightly ‘worse’ when measured at an individual club level. I’d take that.
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