With the international break upon us, there is no match this weekend for me to get heartburn over, so that means that it would be a good time to delve into a little Arminiageschichte. Now, in the last edition of Die Arminiageschichte, the subject of Bielefeld's very existence was questioned, but this time the metaphysical will be cast aside in favour of a football player who was truly a force of nature, and his run-in with Arminia Bielefeld on a pitch in a rather unlikely place. Perhaps you've heard of this fellow?

Some folks say this guy was pretty good.

Yes. Pele. Everyone loves him, and everyone knows he scored a metric ton or two of goals in his career for FC Santos, the Brazilian national team, and the New York Cosmos, but what most folks don't know is that Pele, as a player for Santos, played against Arminia Bielefeld in a friendly in the United States on 10 June 1973.

I ran across this story on the rather exceptional Arminia Bielefeld blog Blog5 (Blog auf Deutsch), who gave a link to the story surrounding this match from the Vlothoer Anzeiger, the newspaper of record from Vlotho, a town of around 20,000 about a half hour to the northeast of Bielefeld. The story (Link auf Deutsch) is based on Vlotho resident Dieter Preis, who got to play in the Bielefeld-Santos match during his short stint with the club.

Lucky dog.

In the aftermath of the 1971-72 Bundesliga Bribery Scandal (a subject of a future die Arminiageschichte), Arminia Bielefeld was tossed down to the third division of German football, and the young Preis was signed up for the squad. His career with die Blauen ended a bit ignominiously when, despite a ban on alcohol during preseason training, the manager caught him in a tavern with a beer glass in his hand. Despite it being filled with an innocent soft drink, he got the axe. I guess that's a footballer's life for you.

Sitting in the Regionaliga West in the second season after their forced drop, which they finished 11th, the club managed to arrange a friendly with Brazilian giant Santos, led by, of course, Pele. This friendly would, of course, not be held in the cozy Almstadion, but rather the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a part of Santos' tour of the US. Bielefeld would get money for the appearance, and the semi-pro players (When Preis wasn't milling about for die Blauen, he was an electrician.) would get their chance to play against Pele and Co.

In front of a crowd of over 60,000 (JFK Stadium's capacity was 75,000), the friendly got underway with Preis sitting on the bench. In the 10th minute, defender Wolfgang Mittendorf had to be replaced because of stomach cramps, and Preis got the unenviable job of defending against Pele. Of course, Preis noted how Pele was a step ahead of everyone else--even at age 34--and at one point slipped through a slew of defenders to score a goal in Santos' 5-0 rout of Bielefeld. After the match, Pele came to the Bielefeld locker room and talked to the players and signed autographs, which Preis showed in his photo above.

Nowadays, Preis is a tennis player for VfL Herford, and recently won the district championship in his age category. However, to Preis, this pales in comparison to the day he shared the pitch with a force of nature in, of all places, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Since I started this blog, I've received several e-mails questioning me why exactly would I waste so much time writing a blog that centres on a club that virtually no one in the English-speaking world's ever heard of. So, rather than respond to these questions individually, I figured I'd put on my teaching cap (since it's what I do five days a week anyway...) and begin a not-quite-regular series on the history of the club, aptly named "die Arminiageschichte," or "Arminia History," for those who have even less of an understanding of German than I do.

With that said, supporting Arminia Bielefeld isn't so much a matter of supporting a club as it is a matter of the metaphysical. After all, is it possible to support a club from a city that does not exist?

Sparrenburg Castle: A figment of your imagination...or is it?

It is a question that has perplexed folks from around the world since at least 1995, when a Usenet post brought up the question of the city of Bielefeld's existence (Link auf Deutsch). As the poster noted, despite the government's statistics showing Bielefeld as one of Germany's 20 most populated metropolitan areas, a rather well-attended university, and two Autobahns connecting nearby, the city of Bielefeld did not exist. After all, as he noted, no one seems to have ever been there, met anyone, or claim to have lived there.

If this was the case, then there was no other conclusion-- Bielefeld did not exist, at least not how the German government portrayed it. The site of Bielefeld was obviously Germany's Area 51: Home to Ailens, Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and JFK too! Bielefeld's existence was merely a facade to cover up the goings-on there. The Train station? A mock up. The university? Made up too. The fact that Bielefeld was hit with an eleven-ton bomb in World War II? The history books were doctored. Arminia Bielefeld, the city's football club? A group of actors hired out for the government. After all, if they were a real football club, as one German noted, why else would they be so anonymous?

Actors. Every one of them.

The Bielefeld Conspiracy or die Bielefeld-Verschwörung, has been a mainstay of Germans on the Internet since Achim Held's post in 1994, and any time the city is brought up, it usually goes like this...

Innocent Person: Say, you're German. Have you ever been to Bielefeld?

Your Average German: Bielefeld does not exist!

Innocent Person: Why do you say that?

Your Average German: Are you from there?

Innocent Person: No.

Your Average German: Know anyone from there?

Innocent Person: No.

Your Average German: Ever been there?

Innocent Person: Why yes! I wa...

Your Average German: You're just a part of the Conspiracy...

Poor Bielefeld (about the size of Montgomery, AL, Peoria, IL, or Anchorage, AK for comparison) has been the butt of jokes across Germany ever since, and the municipal government has spent hundreds of thousands of Euros trying to point out the fact that Bielefeld does exist, and is a very nice place to be. What doesn't help Bielefeld is, in fact, its location. Other cities its size in Germany are a part of a larger metropolitan conglomerate (Bochum, Wuppertal), or were important enough to be noticed on their own (Bonn). Bielefeld, on the other hand, sits in a rural area of Germany between Dortmund and Hanover, and has little in the way of tourist traffic because of the fact that it is off of the beaten path. Germany's ICE train line zips through on its way to more popular spots and the Autobahn runs around the town, giving passers-by little chance to stop by.

Bielefeld's Courthouse: Doesn't exist either!

Of course, Arminia's relatively anonymous status in the Bundesliga does little to help either. So, until Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and Bigfoot all escape from their cages to frolic in the Westphalian countryside or Arminia make some serious noise in the Bundesliga, Bielefeld's status will remain in doubt, making supporting die Blauen not just a question of dedication, but also a question of the fabric of the universe itself.