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Football

12th May 2018

Chaos reigns as Hamburg are relegated for the first time in 55 years

Absolute scenes

Carl Kinsella

German football club Hamburg have been relegated from the Bundesliga for the first time in the club’s history.

Despite beating Borussia Moenchengladbach 2-1 in today’s clash, the club weren’t able to do enough to secure safety — ending their 55 year tenure in Germany’s top flight.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the home fans took the blow very poorly, and ended up delaying the end of the game by 20 minutes by throwing flares onto the field which ended up producing an almighty amount of smoke.

Chaos reigned and riot police with dogs and horses came on to the pitch to interrupt the game and restore order. Eventually the match simply had to be abandoned.

Adding even more drama to the heated affair were the actions of Borussia Moenchengladbach’s fans. While the Hamburg stadium famously has a clock that shows how long the club has been in the top-tier of German football, Borussia Moenchengladbach’s faithful brought their own clock…

This one was counting down the minutes that Hamburg had left in the top-tier of German football.

So maybe we can’t be all that shocked that tensions boiled over when the Bundesliga’s “Dinosaur,” as Hamburg are known, said its painful goodbyes.

Elsewhere, Hoffenheim and Borussia Dortmund joined Schalke and champions Bayern Munich in the league’s top four.