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The Baller League has started: with stars as managers and amateur kickers on the field
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa
"Foul?
No foul?
Chat, what do you say?”
Is this what the future of football sounds like?
No video evidence, but tens of thousands in live streams on Twitch who are asked for their opinion by the commentator.
The Baller League wants to revolutionize football - or at least be part of the revolution.
The league started on Monday and is similar to an indoor football championship: two 15-minute games, small pitch with artificial turf, six against six.
There is – unsurprisingly – no video evidence.
Lukas Podolski, the face of the project together with Mats Hummels, talks about street football.
Because that's what the events in a hangar in Cologne should be about: football should be in the foreground.
Less boredom over 90 minutes, everything faster and more compressed.
Football, so to speak, prepared for the TikTok generation.
How does this work?
Professional footballers, streamers and artists have united for the Baller League.
Football today no longer works through teams, but rather through names, or so the thinking goes.
But they don't play themselves, but are managers of the twelve teams, most of which consist of amateur footballers.
There are eleven game days in a free-for-all format.
Afterwards there will be a final four in which the winner will be chosen.
Viewers can watch the games not only on Twitch or TikTok, but also on linear television: ProSieben has secured the rights and broadcasts live every Monday on its special interest channel ProSieben Maxx.
Why on Monday?
Well, because the competition on the weekend with classic football is too great.
And because the Baller League sells itself as a “new era of football,” they also try to differentiate themselves from it in the rules.
There is an extra rule for the last three minutes of each half, the so-called game changer.
A wheel of fortune decides with what level of tension the tension should be created and so that the supposedly clear results should be overturned again.
For example, there is a three-on-three variant or the special rule that goals can only be scored by volley.
On Monday, this caused some confusion and one or two strange handballs when field players suddenly had to defend their own goal.
Who is in it?
More than 16,000 players applied for a place in the Baller League, and kickers from the regional, upper and state leagues auditioned in a selection training session.
But ex-professionals such as Sascha Bigalke, Moritz Leitner and Christian Clemens were also available.
The managers selected nine of these players for their teams in a draft modeled on US sports.
In addition, each team can award two wild cards per match day.
That's why ex-professionals like Patrick Ebert and Zvjezdan Misimović also played on Monday.
The big names are on the sidelines in the Baller League.
In addition to Podolski, Hummels and Boateng, Christoph Kramer from Borussia Mönchengladbach, ex-professional Max Kruse, the Swiss footballer Alisha Lehmann and comedian Felix Lobrecht are also there as team managers.
However, internet celebrities are likely to be particularly interesting for the young target group.
With MontanaBlack, Trymacs and Knossi, three of Germany's most successful streamers are at the start.
“I know them all by name,” said football professional Kramer, according to the dpa news agency in Cologne.
»I don't have Twitch.
But MontanaBlack or Knossi are the Thomas Gottschalk of young people.«
What is the role model?
The departure from the classic one-and-a-half-hour large-field format is not entirely new.
Last year, former Spanish world-class defender Gerard Piqué launched the so-called Kings League.
Here, too, games are played on a smaller artificial turf field in the hall, but big names like Iker Casillas and Sergio “Kun” Agüero also play here.
The success of the Kings League with its extra rules such as dice that determine the number of players per team is great.
The playoffs were sold out - even though they didn't take place in a gym, but in the legendary Camp Nou in Barcelona.
More than 90,000 people came to the stadium.
The organizers of the Baller League are also toying with a final round in a real football stadium.
However, the Baller League is threatened with national competition.
The Icon League by Toni Kroos and streamer Elias Nerlich is scheduled to start in the summer.
Some names have already been found for this, such as Kroos' teammate David Alaba and rapper Luciano.
What's all this about?
Former DAZN boss Thomas de Buhr and filmmaker Felix Starck are behind the Baller League.
The Kings League in Spain showed that indoor football can attract big sponsors and names.
Especially since the television rights are likely to be relatively cheap and easy to market in times when the broadcasting locations for professional football are like a patchwork quilt.
In addition, indoor football was already a thing in Germany.
Until 2001 there was the official DFB indoor cup, in which the Bundesliga teams also took part.
Today, participation by professional clubs in the famous booth magic is only an exception.
The intensity is higher, which means there is also a risk of injuries in already tight schedules.
Nobody wants that in the billion-dollar business.
The fact that the big football names are only on the sidelines in the Baller League naturally also has consequences for the level, which cannot be compared with the big and expensive football.
There is still a chance of success; it comes from the fact that streamers like MontanaBlack and Trymacs are providing content on their platforms in parallel to the games in booths next to the pitch.
This increases viewership and reaches people whose attention span is supposedly no longer sufficient for the Bundesliga: the young.