North Curve

Drinking, fighting, having sex, and playing soccer—on Saturdays, the people in the north stand have only one thing on their minds: having fun. It's all about pleasure at any price, fighting by any means necessary—intrigue, deception, blackmail. After all, the decisive game takes place in the afternoon, and 40,000 people want to be there. Everyone prepares for it in their own way. Everyone wants to make the deal of a lifetime on this day, and it has little to do with sports. Or does it? Uschi, for example, cheats on her boyfriend with Clemens, the most promising of all the substitute players. His disappearance from the training camp does not go unnoticed and has consequences. Gottschalk begins to systematically get drunk. Roland F. Baier, who trades in soccer players and other commodities, makes a move on Uschi and dangles the license to sell drinks in the stadium in front of her; not a bad deal for the landlady of the club pub, where Gottschalk is ordering another mushroom. But then there's Teddy. The club itself, Union 86, is in serious trouble. Relegation is looming, the banks are turning off the money tap, and the current sports studio hasn't gotten in touch yet. For President Fischering, the latter is the biggest problem of all, if it weren't for that blonde young journalist. Gottschalk has switched to schnapps in the meantime. The manager and treasurer are desperately searching for a way out of the financial chaos. Dennemann is taking his heart pills as a precaution. He suspects that one of them will not survive the day. Gottschalk has to throw up for the first time, while skinheads throw a young Turkish man off a moving bus – so much for the start of a day of soccer in the Ruhr region. 40,000 spectators want to see the decisive game. For the people in the north stand, it's about more than the fate of a club.