Celtic head to the final v St Mirren next month, winning 3-1 in the end. Martin O'Neill on track for a trophy within weeks of stepping in after Rodgers quit.
BFC Dynamo (aka Dynamo Berlin) 2 Carl Zeiss Jena 3 Dynamo are the old Stasi sponsored East German team who won their championship 10 years in a row. In 1979/80 they beat Forest in Nottingham in the quarter finals of the European Cup. Lost at home and of course Forest went on to win it. They now play in German tier 4 and were well beaten in front of about 4k fans tonight in an old stadium way out in East Berlin. Bottle shop 100 metres from the ground sells excellent bottles of Berlin Kindl beer for €1.5 each. Great Jena fans (have seen and admired them playing at home just before Covid lockdown) sang the whole game except for first seven minutes silence for a deceased comrade. A long trip for them (I’d guess 800 or so) on a Friday night. Great fun with the expected high quality low cost beer and sausage in the ground. Tomorrow a trip to the Polish border for Energie Cottbus v Osnabruck in tier 3.
Energie Cottbus 0 Osnabruck 1 2nd v 4th in German 3rd tier. Not a promising start as Cottbus is a bit of a ghost town with few visible attractions and a marked lack of bars. Eventually found a bowling alley/snooker hall which sold us decent beer. All improved at the excellent stadium - about 17k there. Both sets of fans great constant singing, but also appeared to be engaged in the game, which most ultra groups aren’t. Decent quality except for the finishing and some crunching tackles but no ****housery. Really enjoyable game. Had a surfeit of sausages yesterday so in match drinks were accompanied by a tasty herring roll. Top stuff.
BFC Preussen v Lokomotiv Leipzig. Pre kick off. Preussen (Prussia) is housed in south west Berlin, Lokomotiv are top of the tier 4 league. Usual home gate of a few hundred. Today Lokomotiv have brought 500 very large blokes who are penned in, but have access to beer and sausage. Half of the stadium has empty, unused terraces with grass growing on them, the remainder has many more home fans than usual, but is essentially one big bar, with Warsteiner at €4 a half litre and pork chop sandwiches for the same. ****ing brilliant 15 minutes to kick off which is almost irrelevant.
