Football culture bar
If the “Didi” didn’t exist – for the anniversary of an institution
The football culture bar “Didi Offensive” has been around for 10 years now. This filled an astonishing void in the football city of Basel.
The founders and the donor of the name: Raphael Pfister, FCB promotion coach Didier Andrey and Benedikt Pfister (from left) in the football culture bar “Didi Offensive”, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary.
There was a bit of a pre-celebration with a helpers’ dinner in late summer, where it became clear how many good spirits were there. A small celebration that of course couldn’t avoid a typical exercise book like rhyming verses and solving quiz questions. This week, Basel cabaret veteran Roland Suter delivered his heartfelt congratulations on the anniversary on two well-attended evenings, including greetings from Gross to Hitzfeld, from Federer to Peter Balzli. Thank you to stage partner Michael Wernli.
Soon some of FC Basel’s 1994 promotion team will come together for a raclette chat and perhaps promotion coach Didier “Didi” Andrey will also be there, who (unknowingly) gave his name to the Didi Offensive 10 years ago with the lovingly ironic allusion to his tactical legacy has borrowed.
In October 2014, a bar opened on Erasmusplatz that claimed to be a football culture bar. To put it briefly: The promise was kept. And more. The philosopher Martin Walser’s thesis was refuted in a special way, according to which there is only one thing more pointless than playing football: thinking about football.
The Pfister siblings Benedikt and Raphael, especially brother Lukas and Katherine Wildman, have created a place where (sensible) people can talk (sensibly) with each other about football. A pub where there was no stress in ten years, only gasps when things didn’t go as desired for FCB.
And with the Didi Offensive in the football city of Basel they have filled an actually astonishing void: a meeting place for football fans of all stripes, which cannot and does not want to be the somewhat hermetic meeting place of the Muttenzerkurve in Weidengasse.
The cultural part of the Didi Offensive, along with the cultivated destruction of beer, has featured a broad program of countless exhibitions, readings and film screenings over the ten years. And during the pandemic, the pub and quiz business was simply maintained online.
Of course we watch football in “Didi”, of course. During the ten years, “Didi” was also the nucleus of the “Yystoo” movement, which took a powerful stand against the FCB club management under Bernhard Burgener. This is also where the forces gather to preserve the face of the mystical country farm or to breathe life into the future FCB museum. A place for sunshine and rain, where you never feel alone, and where success isn’t everything in life.
After ten years, one can say: If the Didi Offensive didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.
By the way, football games can also be watched at Didi Offensive.
