Hamburg find a new lease of life

Fans of the cult US TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm will remember the classic episode when Cheryl asks her husband Larry David to commit to love "after death through all eternity" in their renewed wedding vows. "I thought this was over at death," stammers a reluctant David, "I had a different plan for eternity … I thought I'd be single again." He eventually yields to her pressure and goes ahead with the vow, in obvious discomfort.

Should football supporters entertain similar doubts when presented with the chance to stay loyal to their club well into the afterlife?

This is no longer a purely theoretical question since Hamburg's Altona cemetery opened a specially branded HSV section last September. Five thousand square metres have been made to look like a stadium and 300-500 burial places with a nice view of the HSH Nordbank Arena are available to, ahem, die-hard fans. So far, only one supporter has found his final resting place there but there have been "30 serious inquiries", according to the board member Christian Reichert. He thinks the proposal is "not necessarily crazier than travelling to an away game in Romania". Maybe so. But at least that's not on a one-way ticket.

Perhaps it might be better to hedge your bets for the afterlife. Imagine you're a 1.FC Köln fan, for example. The city has just agreed to allow burials of up to eight people in communal plots that can be draped in red-and-white colours. Will it be really prudent, however, to sign-up to a post-lifetime of unreasonable hubris, unfulfilled expectations and baseless Lukas Podolski-worship? And we haven't even mentioned Schalke, a byword for eternal pain, yet.

Hamburg fans must be equally wary. The only club to have continuously played in the top-flight since the Bundesliga was created in 1963, the northerners have not won a thing in 22 years. The lack of genuine success is glaringly obvious when one looks at www.mein-hsv-moment.de, an attempt to collect 100 great supporter memories for publication in a book. As most of the contributors are too young to remember anything really worthwhile, the entrants mostly relay random meetings with players or describe their behaviour when signing autographs. This column's favourite contribution tells of a young fan's visit to the house of the HSV legend Uwe Seeler … "Uwe S wasn't there," writes lini, "but papa was talking his to wife and we were allowed to watch TV and eat gummy bears. On the way home, Uwe's wife gave us some autograph cards." One really had to be there, I guess.

The 100-memories project runs for 100 days. The 22 November deadline is presumably designed to get the book ready for Christmas sales but the concept is deeply flawed: Hamburg fans may be presented with much more exciting and significant moments to dwell on when the trophies are handed out in May - if matchday two is anything to go by. By beating much-fancied Dortmund 4-1 in emphatic fashion on Saturday, "Hamburg were revealed as a real title candidate," wrote the daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The oldest member of the squad and one of the youngest were the stars of the show. Eljero Elia, the latest Dutch import (€8.5m [£7.3m] from FC Twente) was tearing up the wings and getting poor Patrick Owomoyela's shorts into a twist. "It was … wow!" said the 22-year-old after a devastatingly effective performance. Dortmund, whose "bar was set so low today that we should have crossed it even at three in the morning", according to the manager Jürgen Klopp, were 3-1 down after 12 explosive minutes that had the stadium shaking. "Incredible, wonderful," said Zé Roberto about the atmosphere; the same was true of his game.

Picked up on a free from Bayern, who puzzingly preferred to renew the contract of pantomime enforcer Mark van Bommel and sign Anatoly Tymoschuk three years after his prime, the 35-year-old scorer of the second goal provided a masterclass in central midfield. "When you see him play your heart leaps with joy," said Dennis Aogo admiringly. The young Swede Marcus Berg, a scorer four minutes into his Bundesliga debut, thought the Brazilian was "the best player I've ever played with".

"He's the key player in the new HSV system," gushed the local tabloid MoPo.

Written off as confused and lame only a week ago, Hamburg have made a very big statement. Crucially their bench looks fabulous, too: two top defenders, David Rozehnal and Marcell Jansen, were there on Saturday and the Dutch winger Romeo Castelen only made the stands. This team will not need an eternity to deliver.

Elsewhere, Mario Gomez rescued a point for a painfully pedestrian Bayern against the most defensive Werder team in living memory. Franck Ribéry, on with 30 minutes to go, needed only one decent turn to open up the defence but spent most of his time on the left in a blatant act of insubordination. Louis van Gaal wants him behind the strikers; the Frenchman, however, "avoided the middle as if he believed it full of pitfalls like in the jungle of New Guinea, with spears, snakes and other vermin," said Süddeutsche Zeitung.

While Bayern are still in search of a first win, Wolfsburg and their former manager Felix Magath are again top, both with six points from six and a goal difference of plus four. His new Schalke side made short shrift of Bochum with a 3-0 win in the "small" derby and Wolfsburg had the experts drooling - they look even better and stronger than last season.

The city of Cologne was getting hot under the collar about Prinz Poldi's first match after his return from exile in Bavaria but after some early pressure and the opener for the home side, the Volkswagen-owned champions roared back to spoil the party. A goal from Edin Dzeko and an own goal from Pierre Wome turned the tide before Obafemi Martins added a late third. Sweet, dude.

Results: Bayern 1-1 Bremen, Frankfurt 1–1 Nürnberg, Leverkusen 1–0 Hoffenheim, Hannover 1–1 Mainz, Köln 1–3 Wolfsburg, Stuttgart 4–2 Freiburg, Hamburg 4–1 Dortmund, Schalke 3–0 Bochum, Gladbach 2–1 Hertha.

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