Hamburg (dpa) – If the theatrical wisdom of the botched dress rehearsal is a truth, the season opener in the newly founded European League of Football (ELF) promises to be a successful premiere at the weekend.
When the match ball was supposed to be delivered by parachutist during the season opening on Tuesday, the jumper missed the roof of a high-rise on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn and landed on the street at the entrance to the amusement mile.
Patrick Esume, who is the so-called commissioner of the ELF, took the little faux pas with humor. The new league has big plans on and around the field: “We will be top European media and sporty from the start,” announced the 47-year-old Esume. 14 years after the end of NFL Europe, a new football era is to be heralded on the continent.
Organized privately
The ELF is a privately organized league in which eight so-called franchises are involved: The Hamburg Sea Devils, Frankfurt Galaxy, Berlin Thunder, Leipzig Knights, Cologne Centurions (Cologne) and Stuttgart Surge from Germany, the Barcelona Dragons from Spain and the Wroclaw Panthers from Wroclaw, Poland. The locations in Cologne and Leipzig were added instead of the originally planned cities of Hanover and Ingolstadt.
The fact that the organizations are not grown clubs provokes criticism from the German Football League (GFL), which is part of the American Football Association of Germany (AFVD). The ELF operates “outside of organized sport in Germany and Europe and has not yet been recognized by the IFAF,” says Axel Streich, who is responsible for strategy and communication on the GFL league board, when asked by the German press agency.
Four Americans allowed
Eight professionals, including four Americans, are admitted to the ELF. The rest of the players are mainly recruited from AFVD clubs. As a result, “the GFL locations in Ingolstadt, Hildesheim and Elmshorn had to withdraw their teams from Bundesliga matches, the GFL locations in Stuttgart, Cologne, Frankfurt and Berlin were weakened considerably,” says the league board responsible for organization, management and law , Carsten Dalkowski. He accuses the ELF of a “selfish and unsolidary approach”.
Despite all the allegations, the towel between the ELF and the GLF has not been completely torn. Both sides stress that they are open to further discussions. Esume refers, among other things, to the extensive cooperation between the Sea Devils and the clubs in the Hanseatic city.
Strong media partner
One of the great things about the ELF is that it has a strong media partner by its side right from the start. One game will be shown live on Pro Sieben Maxx every Sunday. The start is made by the Hamburg Sea Devils, who will receive the Frankfurt Galaxy at 3 p.m. A game will be shown on ran.de on Saturday. It starts at 7 p.m. with the performance of the Stuttgart Surge at the Barcelona Dragons. After the broadcasts from the NFL and from college, it was “a logical consequence to also broadcast the ELF,” says ran sports director Alexander Rösner. Formats on the new channel More Than Sports and the ELF homepage complete the offer.
The sporting figurehead of the new league is the former NFL professional Kasim Edebali, who plays for the Hamburg Sea Devils and who was the main actor in a comedy series about the ELF in the run-up to the premiere season. When asked whether he wants to win the title in the first final on September 26th in Düsseldorf, the 31-year-old says: “You have to win the first game first. But nobody plays football to be second.”
Even before the first kick-off, Esume and Liga manager Zeljko Karajica have their eyes on the future. London will be added as a location in 2022, and in five years the ELF is to consist of 24 teams in at least ten countries. Indeed, that would be a new age for American football in Europe.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210618-99-44509 / 2
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