We sat down with vice president Rainer Bonhof to discuss the upcoming match against FC Augsburg (Saturday, 27th May, 15:30 CET), Borussia’s record home attendances this season and the departing Lars Stindl, Marcus Thuram and Ramy Bensebaini.
Borussia are set to welcome FC Augsburg on Saturday for the final home game of what has been a turbulent season overall. What sort of game are you expecting?
Rainer Bonhof: Augsburg will without question do everything they can to get something at BORUSSIA-PARK because they aren’t safe just yet. There is also a lot at stake for us as we’d like to reach 10th spot. That’s something we definitely want to achieve and the same goes for the fans. One the one hand, it would mean more TV revenue but on the other, we’d be ending the season on a positive note. We’re in the position to do that after the team picked up a point in Leverkusen on Sunday night.
BORUSSIA-PARK is almost sold-out again on Saturday and we’ve had a record number of supporters at home games this season.
Bonhof: That is simply fantastic. We know that we can rely on our fans. Who would have thought that in the season after the pandemic, BORUSSIA-PARK would be sold-out almost every home game? And that we’d get such amazing support at every away game and often have even more fans than the away allocation? It’s really important to me to say thank you for your amazing and passionate support.
We know that we can rely on our fans. It’s really important to me to say thank you for your amazing and passionate support.
Rainer Bonhof
It’s always a bit emotional on the final day of the season and on Saturday, we’ll be bidding farewell to Lars Stindl, Ramy Bensebaini and Marcus Thuram.
Bonhof: From my point of view, all three of them have done great things at Borussia. What Lars Stindl has done here over the past eight years speaks for itself. He’s an outstanding footballer, a great captain, a player who’s extremely dangerous in front of goal, a team player and a great person. Marcus and Ramy have also performed really well over the past four years and they deserve fitting send-offs. I’m assuming that our fans will show their appreciation and give these three players the farewells that they deserve.
The Foals will commence their end of season tour on Monday. How did this come about?
Bonhof: The match at FC Oberneuland is to compensate for the DFB-Pokal game from two years ago which took place at BORUSSIA-PARK instead of in Oberneuland due to the pandemic. They’ll effectively be making up for the home game that they missed which is typical of Borussia. We want to fulfil our social responsibility by visiting the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. We’ll then conclude the season with a barbecue on Tuesday evening, followed by a friendly at Hallescher FC on Wednesday, in order to thank our many fans in the East of Germany. We know that we have had passionate supporters in that part of the country for many decades and that lots of fans travel across the republic every week to watch Borussia. We’re now paying them back with a return visit. I think they’ve certainly more than earned that.
