23rd match day of Luxembourg BGL Ligue FC Una Strassen - Jeunesse Esch Complexe Sportif Jean Wirtz Result: 1:1 (0:0) Attendance: 430 (about 100 away fans)
On the first of May, we travelled to Luxembourg again for our second BGL Ligue match of the long weekend.
After a small lunch, we drove to Wasserbillg, the first Luxembourg city after crossing the boarder, bought coffee and parked our car in front of the train station. Yes, this time we decided to travel with train to the stadium!
A day ticket for inland Luxembourg costs only 4€, but if we took a train from Trier to Luxembourg city, it would probably be 20€ or so. A ticket to travel from the last city in Germany, Igel, to the first city in Luxembourg, Wasserbillig, costs already 9€!
So we took the regional express from Wasserbillig to Luxembourg city, which took us about 30 minutes, then we changed to another train to Bertrange-Strassen. From Strassen station, we had to walk through a nice residential area and in 20 minutes, we arrived at the stadium!
Complexe Sportif Jean Wirtz was a really small but neat ground. There was a wooden stand on one side of the pitch with a cover, and that’s it. The bar? It was outside the ground just next to the main entrance. It was a rather nice architecture with a lot of space indoors.
We ordered two sausages and a cola before we bought our tickets for the game. Once we entered the ground, it started raining. We rushed to find place under the wooden mainstand and got ourselves seated. With more people, they started to stand in front of us and blocked our view.
Luckily, the rain stopped, so we went somewhere to stand next to the pitch to enjoy the football! The rain was the last water drop of the day, and from then there was only sunshine! With this kind of small stadium, you could already know that this club is not a big club at all.
Founded in 1922, Union Athlétique Strassen had played in lower leagues in Luxembourg for a long time until recent years. They earned the promotion spot to the second league for the first time in their history in 2011, and finally promoted to the first year in 2015.
Strassen finished on the fifth place in their first season in the first league, and before the game on the International Worker’s Day, they were standing on the seventh place.
And the guests of the day was Jeunesse Esch, who had been always one of teams who could challenge for top four and represent Luxembourg in European games. However, they were only at the eighth place this season so far.
But still, there were one of the giants in the BGL Ligue. There were a few away fans who travelled to Strassen to show a little bit of support.
We found it funny that when there wasn’t much happening between the fan, we would pay so much more attention to the pitch. We would comment on every action and made sure we wouldn’t miss anything. The game was quite interesting but ended goalless in the first half.
Jenuesse Esch became more aggressive in the second half and managed to score the first goal of the game after 55 minutes into game. But from this point, Strassen started to dominated the game and were determined to grab at least a point, which they finally equalised at the 77th minute.
We’d say one point for each team was a fair result. The game was quite thrilling but both sides wasted too many chances and committed too many fouls, yet they deserved at least a goal! With a turnout of more than 400 people, it was the highest turnout at Strassen this season!
After the game, we tried to catch the bus to the Luxembourg city from the main road, so we wouldn’t have to walk another 20 minutes back to the train station. We passed by the national stadium of Luxembourg in the bus, and reminded us of our first date. Yes, our first date was at this stadium watching Luxembourg against Bosnia.