Eight years ago, Paul Caligiuri blazed the trail to Germany for U.S. players. Now he’s back, playing for the Bundesliga’s most festive fans.
Ashley Caligiuri, age 3, and Yuri Savichev, age 5, are becoming best friends.
“A little Russian boy and a little American girl playing together in Germany,” says Paul Caligiuri. “I guess it’s a small world.”
Paul Caligiuri is a key to St. Pauli’s defense, while Yuri Savichev Sr., is the First Division newcomer’s offensive spearhead.
A decade ago, you wouldn’t find an American and a Russian playing together in Germany. Soviet players weren’t allowed to play in Western Europe and American players weren’t good enough.
In the late 1980s, Perestroika pulled down the Iron Curtain so players like Savichev could go West. In 1987, after having appeared in the 1986 FIFA/UNICEF World All-Star Game, Caligiuri was signed by the Bundesliga’s Hamburg SV.
Caligiuri, victim of the foreign player limit, never made a First Division debut for Hamburg. But he went on to play for Second Division clubs Meppen SV and Freiburg, with a stint in the East German First Division in between. Several Americans followed Caligiuri to Germany. Now, after three years of full-time U.S. national team duty, Caligiuri is back.
“This team’s goal is to stay in the First Division,” said Caligiuri, who started St. Pauli’s first five games, during which the small club team has done surprisingly well, picking up two wins and a tie.
After three years in the First Division, St. Pauli was relegated in 1991. It won promotion for this season, but coach Uli Maslo found himself with a hole in his central defense when Norwegian national team player Tore Pedersen injured his knee in a warmup game.
“I had read that Paul Caligiuri had played very well at the Copa America,” Maslo said. “And I have known of Paul since he was with Meppen. And, of course, we saw his World Cup games on TV.”
Maslo used Caligiuri as a marking back for the first four games, in which St. Pauli gave up only four goals. Caligiuri yielded some press criticism when the players he was marking scored.
In a 2-1 loss to Kaiserslautern, Czech international Pavel Kuka scored twice. In the 1-1 tie with Bayer Leverkusen, German international Ulf Kirsten struck.
“Kuka and Kirsten absolutely belong to the Bundesliga’s top strikers,” Maslo said. “It is rare to shut them out for the entire 90 minutes. I am quite satisfied with Paul’s play. He just needs to get used to extra tight marking within the penalty area. That is what our tactical style requires. It is not what he is accustomed to playing sweeper with the U.S. national team. In the penalty area, a tenth of a second and 10 centimeters make the difference.”
Kuka came into the season with 24 goals in 44 games; Kirsten with 70 goals in 143 games.
Longshoremen and more
As has been the case with his 11-year national team career, Caligiuri’s versatility is proving a valuable asset. Against defending champion Borussia Dortmund, Caligiuri moved into a defensive midfield position to fill in for the suspended Stefan Hanke.
“Paul can play in any defensive position,” Maslo said. “He is very quick at comprehending the coach’s ideas. He played well in the midfield, but with Hanke back, he’ll go back to man marker.”
That means Caligiuri will be facing some of the world’s best strikers.
“The Bundesliga is now comparable to the Italian league,” Caligiuri said. “The forwards get paid millions of dollars to score. We defenders get paid less, but we’re expected to stop them from scoring.”
Even though Borussia Dortmund beat St. Pauli 3-0, its fans gave the team a 10-minute standing ovation.
“We played attacking soccer,” Maslo said, “and they appreciated it.”
St. Pauli fans, who squeeze into the tiny Millerntor — at 21,000, it’s the Bundesliga’s smallest stadium — are known as the league’s most colorful and faithful.
The Millerntor is known as “soccer’s funhouse.”
“We have an intense working-class following comparable to Liverpool’s” Maslo said.
St. Pauli is a sector of Hamburg famous for the Reeperbahn — one of the world’s largest red-light districts — and Europe’s biggest harbor.
Juergen Stark describes St. Pauli fans in “Das Fussball Lesebuch”: “It’s incredible, how here the underdogs, the fringe characters and the freaks unite to become one passionate group… A caldron is created by a group comprised of butchers, longshoremen, hustlers, wretches, salesmen, rockers, the unemployed, students and punks.”
One reporter described the Millerntor like this: “The beer flows in streams, hippies smoke their joints, and nobody is bothered. All are peaceful! The police confirm, ‘There are almost never problems with the home fans. They’re concerned with partying, not fighting.'”
This season, the stadium is sold out to season-ticket holders for the entire season.
“You sit next to the same people game after game and become friends,” Caligiuri said. “Punks with green hair sit next to doctors with brown hair.
“During the second home game, they were waving American flags. That made me feel pretty good.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Mike Woitalla