Whether Manuel Neuer even knows what and who is approaching him? The German national goalkeeper chatted lightly at the press conference on Saturday that his team against Estonia need fast passing forward and moving offensive actors - but not a word of the danger for his defense. Because if the DFB team in the evening in Tallinn completed their European Championship qualifier against the Estonians (20.45 clock, live ticker SPIEGEL, TV: RTL), then meet New and Co. actually on the best scorer in Europe.
This is not Robert Lewandowski, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, but Erik Sorga and plays in the Estonian Meistriliiga. The 20-year-old owes his leadership in the ranking for the coveted Golden Shoe largely to the fact that in Estonia, the season is almost over - here is played from March to November and paused in winter - and the top leagues in Europe her Just started operation. But right now Sorga is in first place and hopefully he has printed and framed this snapshot.
Sorga scores his goals with Flora Tallinn, the championship leader and most likely upcoming champions. Flora is ten points ahead of pursuer Levadia Tallinn with four games remaining. For Flora a satisfaction, the old pecking order in Estonian football is restored. With eleven titles, the club is the record champion, but in the past seven seasons you were only twice in the lead. In the other years, the title holders Levadia and Nomme Kalju.
Only Tallinn dominates football
Of course, these two clubs are also from the capital. The first Estonian League is a city championship. Not only that Tallinn almost always represents half of the first division in the Meistriliiga. Since the League was founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the recovery of the independence of the Baltic States, there have been 28 championships, all of which went to clubs playing in Tallinn. Some of them have long since gone bankrupt: Norma Tallinn became champion in 1993 and was insolvent in 1997, the 1997 champion Latana Tallin was bankrupt in 2000. The 2005 TVMK Tallinn ceased to exist in 2008. Flora, on the other hand, is the constant in the league.
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Football in Estonia: Klavan, Flora and an oligarchMartin also played in Flora, another one who was temporarily top in Europe. When he made his 157th international appearance for Estonia at the beginning of the millennium, he was Europe's record national player. Until the summer, Reim was also national coach. Before qualifying in Germany he had announced that he would undergo a full body shave, should his Estonians win. The shaving took over the Löw-Eleven in the 8-0 win, and then Reim was rid of his job. It has not got much better since then. In Belarus at 0: 0 brought Reims successor Karel Voolaid after all the first point for the 100th of the FIFA World Ranking.
Only one Estonian club was once in the Soviet League
Football is a sport in Estonia that has a hard time. The unlike in other countries is exposed to fierce competition. And that's not just because of popular alternatives like basketball, cross-country skiing or track and field. Football was and still is considered by many Estonians as a Russian sport - and is thus unpopular. The Soviets have partially renamed the Estonian clubs, sometimes bleed them out. In all the years of Soviet football, it has once managed a single Estonian club for two seasons to qualify for the first league. This was Tallina Kalev in the early 1960s. The club exists today, he plays in the relegation zone of the Meistriliiga and has at least one prominent president: the former Augsburg and Liverpool professional Ragnar Klavan. Klavan is still active as a footballer, now in Italy with Cagliari Calcio, the club in his home country he leads by the way.
The rivalry, the hostility between Estonians and Russians, she lives in the country to this day, and she also lives in football. As the FC Tevalte 1994 was about to win the title, he was disqualified by the association under today's misty circumstances at short notice. Tevalte was considered a club of Russians, and the Estonian association leadership, it was rumored, wanted to prevent a championship of this team so few years after independence.
At the Tallinn derby between Flora and Levadia, it flares up every year, the old enmity. Flora is the club of the national to nationalist Estonians, Levadia is considered Russo friendly - even if the club is run by a former Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Levada, who has conveniently given the club its name.
Celebrated by 48,000 in Frankfurt
When the two clubs meet, then more rules than the sporting competition. Fireworks are ignited, unfriendly slogans are placarded, but usually the security forces react to it in a relaxed manner. For one simple reason: even with the derbies, the stadiums are almost empty, and the pyrotechnicians can let off steam. In the 20,000-capacity Flora Stadium, the A. le Coq Arena, named after an Estonian beer brewer, lose only a few hundred visitors at top matches.
When Flora had to compete in the first round of the Europa League qualification this summer at Eintracht Frankfurt, the brave Estonians were celebrated after the game of 48,000 in Eintracht Stadium. As many visitors as were in the stadium that evening, Flora does not get together in the whole season. The average attendance at the leader this season is 713.