Show your support for Hamburger HSV six feet under

By: Bob | September 17th, 2007

Ok kids, gather around and listen carefully. We all know that your overarching goal in life is to make millions, quit your job and spend your retirement days owning a soccer club. The only hitch is that you haven’t come up with a way to make millions. Forget starting a dotcom or inventing a new technology. There is money to be made in death, especially the deaths of soccer fans.

The latest club to cash in on their fans’ afterlife is Hamburger HSV. The German Bundesliga side is building a cemetery for its fans right next to the club’s stadium.

The graves will be arranged in a semi-circle on three ascending levels to resemble a football stand. The 2,500 square meter site is in the corner of an existing cemetery.

Reichert said the cemetery was being built in response to queries from some of the club’s 50,000 members about whether it would be possible to have their ashes scattered over the pitch, to be buried in the stadium or have an urn buried under the penalty spot.

Fans of England’s Everton Football club can have their ashes buried in an urn beside the pitch. German burial laws don’t allow that, but fans of German football clubs Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund can be buried in football-shaped urns or coffins painted in their team colors.

Lest you think this is going to be a tacky place to spend life eternal, the club’s board is making it known that it wants things to be pure class.

He said the choice of headstone — perhaps in the shape of HSV’s diamond emblem — would be left open to fans but garish colors would not be encouraged. He said he could imagine flowers to be planted in the shape of the club’s emblem, and memorial stones to be erected to famous HSV players.

One can also imagine a special section for players and managers whose careers have died while at the club.