Friday the 13th: Why the day is not unlucky in football

On June 13, 1986, the day of the World Cup group match between Germany and Denmark, the tabloid "Ekstra Bladet" barked at readers on its front page: "Today, the pompous Germans will be dealt with. They have trampled on our national pride for many years."

That day, the football world was shocked to discover that the otherwise peaceful Danes can also hate. And for a truly banal reason: Apparently, the German Football Association (DFB) hadn't considered it necessary to play a friendly against their northern neighbor in previous years. Denmark's German coach, Sepp Piontek, was apparently particularly excited about the match.

That evening, his team truly settled the score against an unhinged German team. The final score was 2-0, and the Ekstra Bladet newspaper chanted "Kaiser Sepp." The Danes were the new World Cup favorites. Until their next match, when they lost 5-1 to Spain.

The former captain received his first red card in the U19 team at Chemnitz on a Friday the 13th (reason: insulting the referee). A Friday the 13th also proved to be his downfall in the Bundesliga. In a match against Bremen, he was sent off for repeated fouls on Bernhard Trares. In an interview with "Sportbild," Ballack said: "Completely unjustified..." In that interview, he also said that he would like to meet actress Sandra Bullock: "Because her name sounds so similar to mine." Great. I feel the same way about Andreas Buck and Andreas Beck.

Speaking of: ex-captain. Speaking of: "Sportbild." In his column for the newspaper, amateur politician Lothar Matthäus once tackled a very hot topic: Eastern German football. He wrote: "The East-West problem must be removed from people's minds."

In the text, he spoke out strongly in favor of East German football and stated that he was following the situation at Lok Leipzig "intensively." His plea for East German football concluded with the words: "I'm coming to Leipzig and will try to get involved. I'd even play for Lok one day to generate public interest. That's a promise!"

On Friday, May 13, 2005, he made good on his promise. To great media fanfare, the 44-year-old, now a re-amateur, appeared in a cup match for Lok Leipzig. In the following issue, readers unfortunately waited in vain for a sign of life from "Bild" columnist Franz-Josef Wagner. It would have read something like this: "These feet know neither East nor West. These hands built Leipzig. This man is Germany. This man's name is Lothar Matthäus."

David Beckham at LA Galaxy

David Beckham began his career at Los Angeles Galaxy on a Friday the 13th. A godsend for "Bunte" magazine. They followed up: "Mr. Beckham. Brave!" After all, the club had repeatedly offered the Englishman the opportunity to postpone his start by a day. But Beckham dismissed the suggestion: "I'm not superstitious." That's a rather surprising statement, given that he once stated in another interview that there are always an even number of Coke cans in his fridge and that pens must always be arranged in straight lines on his desk.

On Friday, October 13, 1995, everything went wrong for Jörg Berger. Initially, the then Schalke coach couldn't properly celebrate his 51st birthday because he was in excruciating pain. He had suffered a hernia. He was scheduled to undergo surgery that afternoon. What made the appointment particularly unfortunate was that his team was playing against 1. FC Kaiserslautern that evening, but Berger was still under anesthesia. "Schalke has the plague," Berger said shortly before his surgery.

In fact, the coach wasn't the only injured player: In addition to him, Jens Lehmann (meniscus), Uwe Weidemann (torn muscle fiber), Tom Dooley (broken scaphoid), Frank Schön (meniscus), and Sergej Dikhtiar (broken fibula) were also absent from the match against FCK. Jörg Albracht played one of his two Bundesliga games in goal, with players like Waldemar Ksienzyk and David Wagner lining up in front of him. Schalke still managed a draw.

On Friday, November 13, 1987, Helmut Schulte celebrated his debut as coach at Millerntor. FC St. Pauli beat Rot-Weiß Oberhausen 6-1. Afterward, he repeated the same tactics in his games against RWO as he did in that thrashing victory. When St. Pauli played in Oberhausen in the 1996 German Cup, the team checked into the same hotel again. Schulte: "Back then, the Maritim in Gelsenkirchen brought us luck, too. And I wouldn't mind if it did its job again this time."

But things didn't look good for the Bundesliga team at the start of the match. Thomas Pröpper, cousin of St. Pauli's Carsten Pröpper, scored the opening goal for the Regionalliga side in the first half. Only in the second half did St. Pauli barely turn the game around and advance to the second round of the cup.

What is Friday the 13th in Germany, the USA, or England is Tuesday the 13th in Spain. People lock their doors and try to spend 24 hours in bed. Unfortunately, UEFA shows no mercy, and so Real Madrid had to compete in the Champions League on September 13, 2005. That evening, Real were literally torn apart by Olympique Lyon at the Gerland Stadium. The three goals in the French side's 3-0 victory came between the 22nd and 31st minutes. At least Iker Casillas managed to save a penalty from Juninho.

The three-game coach

One of the shortest coaching tenures in football history ended on Friday, February 13, 2004. After just three games, Greuther Fürth coach Thomas Kost was sacked. The reason was a 2-0 defeat in Trier and a chairman named Helmut Hack. He cursed after the defeat: "I saw a dead eleven go down." Footnote 1: Kost was the fifth coach in four years at the Franconian club, following Benno Möhlmann's departure in the summer of 2000. And Hack actually had big plans for him; after all, Kost was specially recruited from Arsenal's scouting department. Footnote 2: A week after the Trier game, Benno Möhlmann was back in his seat.