There are Leicester City fans all over the globe but to see the home grown bonding with other clubs and in Germany is a bit of a special. We do know that football clubs can have special relations to each other as we all know about Juventus and Notts County kit relations of the past, Barcelona and their start in football with many English relations in the early first years. The oldest club in Germany, Dresdner SC, was founded by Englishmen so of course you have the roots.
Looking at the Leicester / Bochum story it’s not really any sort of long relation between the two clubs, and not at all anything to do with the two clubs own administration. It’s all fans related. A previous tour of Leicester fans to Germany and by a bit of coincidence visiting this city of Bochum and going to a game were they found special bonding, a good atmosphere and a pub of very friendly Germans played a major part.
This all happend back in 2007 and of course great to see such a relation appear and grow, but all in all it’s just a fans issue and nothing else, but again how great this could turn out to become. Growing this friendship is a bit of a unique setting as it could lead to more building of friendship between fans than the opposite.
Leicester and Bochum are a bit similar in being what they are, both in blue and white, being a bit of a elevator team at times between the two top tiers and also regularly having teams with players that did well before a key player has been sold, retired or just something else happened.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe only player to have played for both clubs is Christian Fuchs. He is not German or English, coming from Austria, so a bit of a neutral man in the set up. Fuchs who left Leicester this summer made 116 league appearances while at this football club, scoring 2 goals. He spent three years at Bochum from 2008 to 2011 adding up 53 league games scoring 6 goals.
But as we all know and how we all did get to know Christian Fuchs, what a brilliant person and footballer, just a grand example of how people in this game should be, if everyone did their job as Fuchs did, then the future of football looks fantastic as he know drives his career and football adventure further with a new possibility with Charlotte FC.
Embed from Getty ImagesThis phenomena of a friendship did start with a local derby between Bochum and Schalke, and after the game one Leicester fans walked into a Bochum friendly pub and since then this friendship has blossomed. A strong bonding between the parties has happened and friendship that has seen people of both clubs attending weddings and such.
Trips by fans of the clubs to each others away events has been seen since then, having Bochum fans attending Millwall, Crystal Palace and West Bromwich, later also Liverpool, Huddersfield and Newcastle, while Leicester fans have been around watching Bochum against Union Berlin, Hansa Rostock and Bayer Leverkusen.
Fantastic to see that English fans are going to out to explore football culture outside their own country and knowing that Bochum fans also were present at the Champions League away games in Brugge and Copenhagen is a bit special as well, as they really are growing their support for Leicester in the best way possible.
There are other establishments between English and German clubs and their fans such as Ipswich Town and Fortuna Dusseldorf, Celtic and St Pauli, Rangers and Hamburgers Sportsverein, and the Borussia Monchengladbach / Liverpool bond as well to notice.
Embed from Getty ImagesLeicester and Bochum do have similar backgrounds as cities. They build on their culture and of course also the kit colours with both being blue, you can start to understand why this could be something that over years will be noticed as a formed relation also including the two clubs with Leicester bringing a four page story on this in a summer special magazine a few years ago.
We all know the most of Leicester City, but if you like to find out more about Vfl Bochum you can just click on the name, and great to see them back in the top flight, coming up as winners last season from Bundesliga 2. Thomas Reiss is their manager and he has previous life as a player at the club. Bochum also have a similiar away kit as Leicester this season, a mint coloured, but their third colour is traditionally how Leicester used to be, all white.
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