There’s something beautifully stupid about cup football. Something irrational. You know it’s nonsense, and you still believe. You still shout at the telly. You still google the name of a kid playing left-back for a third division team and pretend you always rated him. Because maybe, just maybe, the universe is still chaotic enough to let something weird happen.
And it is. Arminia Bielefeld—yes, them, the club from a city that allegedly doesn’t exist—are in the DFB-Pokal final. After beating Union Berlin, SC Freiburg, Werder Bremen, and even Bayer Leverkusen. Not by accident. Not via parked buses and penalty flukes. They outplayed Bundesliga sides while juggling a promotion fight in Liga 3 and a squad held together with sellotape and dreams.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve supported this club since the early 90s. I’m biased. Of course I am. But even the most objective neutral has to admit this is one of the best football stories in years. This isn’t a heart-warming tale. It’s a grenade lobbed at the glass palace of modern football. And the shrapnel hits every argument ever made against 50+1.
The 50+1 rule in German football is basically the Bundesliga’s last stand against the full-blown capitalism circus that’s swallowed most other top leagues. It means clubs can’t be majority-owned by investors—the club has to hold at least 51 percent of voting rights. So no sugar daddies buying a team on a Tuesday and rebranding it into oblivion by Friday. It’s a stubborn, charming, increasingly fragile buffer. Of course, like everything in football, there are loopholes and exceptions (cough, RB Leipzig, cough), but the spirit of the rule is clear: keep football in the hands of the people who love it, not those who treat it like an asset class. Critics call it outdated; supporters (me included) call it sacred. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone—and we all know what happens then.