It looks like a football museum, but it’s actually a private apartment: Arnd Zeigler’s studio. The SV Werder Bremen stadium announcer has been broadcasting his “wonderful world of football” from his home since 2007. The reason for this is sad, but the concept has now proven itself successfully.
From the point of view of some football fans, Arnd Zeigler is living a dream. The Werder Bremen stadium announcer and moderator of the show “Zeiglers Wunderwelt des Fußballs” has turned his hobby into a career. For 15 years he has been broadcasting from his apartment with slapstick and a wink to the football-loving republic.
The show is not ordinary: the studio is on the ground floor of his apartment and is reminiscent of a child’s room packed with football memorabilia for an adult who did not want to grow up. “My whole life consists of hobbies,” enthuses the 57-year-old. In addition to his television career, he produces a podcast, presents on the radio and performs with his tour “Hat schon Gelb!” up on the stage. If you accompany him into his football kingdom, you are standing in the museum of a football nerd: jerseys hang on the walls, mascots of Bundesliga clubs dangle from the shelves. Zeigler owns a huge collection of collector’s books and football chronicles.
During the recording, the director sits in a kitchen in the next room. Work and private life sometimes merge: Then, for example, the little daughter bursts in during the rehearsal and wants to kiss Zeigler goodnight. “It’s a TV show, it’s very quirky and unusual,” he says, laughing. “It’s not produced like some glossy TV show.”
The story of how it came about is actually sad: in 2007, the year it was first broadcast, Zeigler separated from the mother of his eldest child. “Basically, my son is the main reason why the show comes from my apartment and not from some studio in Cologne,” he says. “It was a difficult time for my son, but one thing we had in common was football. And I promised him I would go to training with him and drive to the stadium,” says Zeigler about his son Ben, who is now in the Oberliga plays.
The station, which first wanted to produce the format in Cologne, came to Zeigler and agreed to the recording in its own four walls: “It must have been a total risk and an experiment that has never existed within WDR.” In his first place, the show actually took place in Zeigler’s living room before he moved again. But it’s not just Zeigler, behind him is a team in which he emphasizes the friendly relationship.
In the beginning, “ZWWDF” was purely a Bundesliga show. Originally, Zeigler was only supposed to be on the phone with viewers. However, the discussions were similar week after week and receded into the background. Meanwhile, the regional league and amateur football are also discussed. Another core element is the column “Kacktor des Jahres” invented by Zeigler, in which strangely created hits – also from the amateur sector – are awarded. When the “Kacktor” was awarded a trophy in the form of a toilet seat, some amateur clubs celebrated “folk festivals”, as Zeigler says.
Zeigler looks back particularly fondly on an interview with the then BVB coach Jürgen Klopp, which was not to become a “run-of-the-mill” conversation. Both delivered a funny exchange in front of the camera in 2010, in which they both conducted a deliberately critical interview despite Dortmund’s 4-0 victory at Hannover 96 and the first place in the table. Klopp knew the show, but he didn’t know exactly what kind of interview was going on. Zeigler: “I asked him two or three questions and he played really well and stayed serious. We pushed each other up and it was great fun.”
What does the sport actually mean to him? “Football is an opportunity to create emotions that no other hobby can create,” says Zeigler, “that you are passed out with joy because your club surprisingly wins a game, you can have that as an eight-year-old and as an 88-year-old. “
He has been associated with Werder since childhood. First he distributed the newspaper in the Weser Stadium – today he is the stadium announcer there. He can also rein in his passion when it comes to the matter at hand. In a Werder game in the past second division season, Zeigler explained a referee’s decision soberly and factually to the angry audience. For this he will soon be awarded the Fair Play Prize of the DFB. As a player, he says, he would never have made it into the Bundesliga. Now he’s kind of a part of it.
