Even though following football in Germany is a lot cheaper than in the UK, travel and accommodation costs still add up. For most of us, a football trip to Germany can only happen a couple of times a season. So we need to look elsewhere for our daily or weekly German football fix.
The good news is that there is a mass of stuff out there. The bad news is that there is actually so much material that you could spend most of your life watching or reading about German football and waste a lot of time and effort sifting the good from the bad.
To make things easier I have collected a couple of my favourite places.
Watching
BT Sport is always my first port of call. Their website gives you scores, fixtures and news as well as video clips. They also show two or three big games most weekends. They sometimes also stream second division games, and their European Football Show always has something Bundesliga related.
ITV has a one hour show on Monday evenings called Bundesliga Football Highlights (also available on ITV Player).
Sportschau is a German TV programme. Although it’s all in German, they often stream lived matches – usually cup games or from the third division. If you click on the ‘Live” button at the top of the home screen you get a link to a page which tells you about all upcoming live sport.
The Bundesliga has its own YouTube channel
Reading and listening
Bundesliga Fanatic is my favourite English language site dedicated to German football.
As well as match reports, statistics and video clips they offer really interesting opinion and information pieces.
Deutsche Welle is Germany’s international broadcaster (a bit like the BBC World Service).
Its English language website has a Sports section which provides news, analysis and match reports. There is also an absolutely brilliant blog written by Ross Dunbar and Jonathan Harding, two sports journalists.
ESPN have a whole Bundesliga section on their website.
Talking Fussball is a weekly podcast in English. There site also has a set of recordings about key football words in German called “Sprechen Sie Fussball”.
Next up is the official Bundesliga site. As well as loads of written material, they provide video clips. On match days the ‘Live Ticker’ can keep you up to speed on games in progress. If you click on a logo for specific team news.
All Bundesliga clubs, and most second tier clubs have an English section on their websites.
And of course, you can sign up to twitter feeds either for the Bundesliga or individual clubs to get breaking news and latest scores.
Raphael Honigstein (writer of : Englischer Fussball: A German View of Our Beautiful Game) writes excellent articles on German football for the weekly Guardian Bundesliga blog (http://www.theguardian.com/football/bundesligafootball). He also writes for other papers and often pops up on TV shows.
Vavel is an online international sports newspaper with a regularly updated Bundesliga section
Books
Here are a few of my favourite Bundesliga books.
I have also started to write a series of books about individual clubs.
Make your own
I recently came across a company called paper li which provides an online tool for you to gather items from across the internet to create your own newspaper. I have used paper li to create a weekly digest of the news items that interested me most about German football – German Football Weekly.