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The final of the Baller League took place on Monday evening
Photo: Christopher Neundorf / EPA
The first season of the newly created Baller League ended on Monday evening. At the Final Four tournament in front of 12,000 fans in Düsseldorf, league co-founder Lukas Podolski's Streets United team beat Calcio Berlin 7-5 in the final.
BVB player Marco Reus and Frenchman Paul Pogba watched the event from the stands. The Las Ligas Ladies teams led by national player Jule Brand, who acted as team manager, and Eintracht Spandau, with former Bundesliga professional Hans Sarpei as sports director, also qualified for the semi-finals of the indoor league.
CEO Felix Starck, who founded the league together with the 2014 world champions Podolski and Mats Hummels as prominent partners, rated the first season as a clear success: “No question about it. I would have defined half of everything as a success," he enthused after the final: "Half the sporting quality, half the spectators. We have increased our expectations tenfold.«
The first season of the Baller League began in January. For eleven weeks, twelve teams of amateur and former professional players competed against each other in six-on-six games in order to qualify for the final tournament. In addition to league presidents Hummels and Podolski, Gladbach professional Christoph Kramer, ex-professionals Max Kruse and Kevin-Prince Boateng and comedian Felix Lobrecht were there with their own teams.
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