The NFL will play its first-ever regular-season game in Germany on Sunday, with huge demand for tickets as the Bucs and Seahawks square off at Allianz Arena in Munich.

The league said there were 3 million requests for tickets for the 70,000-seat stadium, a testament to the rabid following there. While much of the league’s international efforts have focused on London in recent years, the NFL has maintained a relationship with Germany for decades.

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In the 1970s, the league had plans for an Intercontinental Football League, including teams in Munich and West Berlin. The IFL was never more than a proposal, but they presented a 1976 summer exhibition between Texas A&I and Henderson State from Berlin’s Olympiastadion, which was built for the 1936 Olympics.

“American football is in Europe and is here to stay,” an unidentified man in bell-bottom jeans and a T-shirt says in a grainy 17-minute video buried online in the University of North Texas digital library. “In a few years, when the sport has become more popular and there is a fan group, it can become professional without the slightest flaw. You can foresee a Berlin team with German players, maybe with an American quarterback or runner. Believe me, they’re going to be yelling and swearing at each other in German, not English.”

It has taken almost 50 years, but American football at the highest level has arrived in Germany. We talked to players and coaches who have seen the country’s love affair with football unfold since 1990, when the league sent two teams each year to Berlin for a preseason game as part of its “American Bowl” series, and through 15 seasons of different incarnations of NFL Europe.

🇺🇸🇩🇪 Die Allianz Arena ist ready fürs NFL-Spiel! 😍 #NFLMunichGame @FCBayern

— NFL Deutschland (@NFLDeutschland) November 10, 2022

The first NFL preseason game in Berlin featured the Chiefs and Rams at a historic time in the city’s history, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. In introducing the debut game, commissioner Paul Tagliabue referred to John F. Kennedy’s famous 1961 speech in that city.

“(Kennedy) said if people want to understand freedom, meaning the difference between freedom and totalitarianism, let them come to Berlin,” he said. “We have come to Berlin to take part in a celebration of freedom, to celebrate the success of a free people and a successful economic system.”

Kansas City had allowed coaches and players to bring their families along for the weeklong stay, practicing in the morning and taking buses for short trips to explore the city’s history in the afternoon.

Tony Dungy, Hall of Fame coach and Chiefs defensive backs coach in 1990, who was also in Berlin with the Vikings in 1993: Both trips were fantastic, culturally. The wall was just coming down at that point, which was very historic. We got to take our oldest daughter at the time, and it was very cool to explore with her and see a different culture.

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Bruce Arians, longtime NFL coach, Chiefs running backs coach in 1990: It was absolutely amazing. We had landed in Shannon (in Ireland, to refuel), and from Shannon to Berlin, we all watched “The Jesse Owens Story,” and we got off the plane and went straight to the stadium. I mean, it was so eerie to walk in that stadium, to see Hitler’s box still there. And we went over to the drill field, and I forget how many troops he had out there. It was really chilling.

Tom Pratt, longtime NFL assistant, Chiefs defensive line coach in 1990: We certainly went after the football, although we did get beat in that game. But we also got to visit Berlin and see the wall. I thought that was important. We got to share in the history of the whole thing.

Wade Phillips, longtime NFL coach, coached in Berlin with the Broncos in 1992: You think you have history in the United States until you see it there. We went to some of the museums there, and they were fantastic. You really notice that kind of stuff.

Dungy: It was unbelievable, to get the whole scope of what life was like. That wall had been in place for so long, and it was just the very beginning of progressing to tear it down. A few of our players got little pieces of rock from the wall.

Pratt: We took our two girls and my son, and we rented a chisel and a hammer from one of the entrepreneurs there, and they’re up there chipping part of the wall off. I’ve still got them. I’ve got one piece outside by my front door.

Dave Moore, longtime Bucs tight end and radio analyst, played in Berlin with the Dolphins as a rookie in 1992: I’m trying to concentrate and make the team, and talk about distractions, now I’m in Germany. It was only two and a half years after the wall came down. We stayed in East Berlin, and nobody could speak English because the secondary language was Russian. Every time we went out, you had to point to a picture on the menu. Otherwise you had to go where Checkpoint Charlie was to get to West Berlin, where everybody spoke English. The Broncos stayed in West Berlin. It was a great experience, though, very cool to play in a stadium that had a ton of history.

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Brad Johnson, longtime NFL quarterback, played in Berlin with the Vikings in 1993 and later in NFL Europe: Holy smokes, this is where they held the Olympics. This is where Jesse Owens ran. The history of it all. When the game was played, it was like just another game. Looking back at it, it’s awesome to be able to say I got to visit and go overseas and experience different things.

Robert Smith, Vikings running back who played in Berlin in 1993: This is my rookie season and (it was) just incredible for me. I was a history major at Ohio State, a military history specialist. To go in there, being from Ohio State, knowing Jesse Owens’ story, practicing by Olympic Stadium and playing in Olympic Stadium. My mother’s father was first generation from a border area called Szczecin inside Poland, so Polish and German roots. It was just a really cool trip for me. The reception was amazing. The fans were excited to see us and fascinated by the size of the linemen. It was an amazing trip.

Curt Menefee, Fox Sports broadcaster, called eight World Bowls from 2000 to ’07: I was a history major in college, so I always liked Berlin. You’d drive around Berlin and there’s still huge sections of wall there, with graffiti on it. You’d see that, and being witness to that history live was something that was high on my agenda, and you appreciated it as a cultural experience more than the football aspect. There’s a lot of history around Germany, (such as) the churches in Cologne.

Peter Vaas, two-time World Bowl champ as coach of the Berlin Thunder: I was fascinated with the history of both Berlin and Cologne. You’d be walking down the streets in Cologne and you’d see pieces of the Roman aqueduct system. You get down around the Reichstag, the Berlin capital, and the Brandenburg Gate, you can see the brick path of where the wall used to exist. When I was in Berlin, the team would go to a concentration camp. Each year, we had a whole new group of players. It was eye-opening to see how our guys reacted to stuff. It gave you chills.

For most of two decades, the NFL used Europe for its developmental spring league. The World League of American Football had three of its 10 teams in Europe in 1991, including the Frankfurt Galaxy in Germany. In 1995, it was rebranded as NFL Europe, adding a second German team in the Rhein Fire, based in Dusseldorf.

The league rebranded as NFL Europa for its final season in 2007, when five of six franchises were in Germany: the Galaxy and Fire, along with the Berlin Thunder, Cologne Centurions and Hamburg Sea Devils. 

Menefee: I wouldn’t be where I am today without NFL Europe, and I think a lot of people can say that. I look at coaches, and Jason Garrett came out of there and Jim Tomsula. Doug Pederson actually played there as a quarterback. I don’t want to say a lot of people owe their existence (to it), as they could have found a different path, but it certainly was the best way forward for a lot of people, and I include myself in that. So I have fond memories of it. Germany was always the country that celebrated American football better than everything else.

Doug Graber, longtime NFL and college assistant, won the World Bowl as the head coach of the Frankfurt Galaxy: The Germans absolutely love football. It’s shocking to me that the NFL has played games in London and not in Germany. Frankly, it’s not even close. In Frankfurt, we averaged almost 50,000 a game. It’s hard to explain how wild the games were there. I’ve never been in a game in this country that could approach what it was like. You couldn’t hear yourself think.

Brian Baldinger, NFL offensive lineman and broadcaster, called NFL Europe games for Fox: It was unreal. Every game I did there, whether it was in Frankfurt or Dusseldorf, Berlin not so much, it was just a phenomenal scene. The pregame party, the crowd was so into it.

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Menefee: The Deutschland Derby, between Frankfurt and Rhein, was always in the last three weeks of the season, and they had 40,000 people. You may have a game in Barcelona, and Barcelona’s a great freakin’ place, but there’s 6,000 people there. It’s the L.A. of Europe in a way, in that you have beaches and sunshine and, “Yeah, we’ll show up at the game later.” In Germany, there was 40,000, whether it was at Rhein or Dusseldorf.

Arians: They were fantastic. Great, great crowd. A little different from London, but you look, and every jersey in the league is worn. Somebody’s got one on. It’s loud and nonstop, a tremendous crowd.

Pratt: They were enthusiastic. I think in some cases, they didn’t know what they were cheering for, but it was all new for them. When the kicker came out, they were very excited.

Vaas: I can’t remember if this was cheering or booing, but they constantly blow whistles during the game. You play to the whistle, but there’s a zillion different whistles, so you’re not really positive which one you’re playing to. You’ve got to get used to how a play starts and stops from the officials on the field. Was it a long-distance whistle or up close in your ear?

Graber: They’d blow whistles, and if the referees would ask them not to, they’d just blow them louder. The players just got used to playing with that. It was deafening. Frankfurt and the Rhein Fire just packed them in.

Menefee: They’d have halftime acts. “Mambo No. 5” (by Lou Bega), they performed it at halftime of one of those games. So I saw it before it had even come out in the States. You’d hear songs there, and three months later, you’d hear songs here. I saw Coolio perform there once at halftime. It was a big deal, those games. Germany really embraced the league from Day 1.

Dungy: The people were just getting into NFL football, had a lot of energy. It was pretty awesome. There was a fascination to it. It wasn’t any different than being at a regular preseason game for us. People seemed to know what was going on. They got excited over the big plays and the hits.

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Johnson: What I remember about Frankfurt was it was 35,000 fans, but it felt like 80,000.  They have an Army base there, and it was electric. The fan base, the crowd noise, was always in play. It was loud, exciting. Fireworks, different kinds of music being played. I loved it.

Baldinger: They had certain songs. For whatever reason, “The Mighty Quinn,” Bob Dylan. That was their song in Dusseldorf after they won. They played that during the game, after the game, everybody sang that like a chant.

Graber: Their favorite was (Bruce Channel’s) “Hey, Baby.” They’d sing that two to three times a game. And they sang a song (by Smokie) about Alice, and the punchline of the song was “Alice, Alice, who the f— is Alice?” The games were on Fox and you could clearly hear it on TV. The Germans, the more they cuss, the more they think they’re American.

Phillips: “Hey Baby,” they sang that one for sure. Bruce Channel, he used to come to our camp and sing that song when I was with the Saints. My dad (Bum) brought in a lot of country-western singers. It was a big song over there, and it was fun to hear that again.

Menefee: You’ve got 40,000 people in the stands and they’re singing every word in English. You’re just waiting for it. It is amazing, the random songs. All of a sudden, I’m hearing (“Hey Baby”) in the stands. I’m like, “Why do they love this song?” I still don’t know why to this day. It really is funny, but they created an atmosphere that was like no other.

“Power parties” were massive pregame gatherings that Sports Illustrated in 2002 described as “a Teutonic tailgate that’s something between a state fair and a Grateful Dead concert.”

Baldinger: They had these sing-along songs, power parties that started hours before. They just wanted a taste of Americana, so they got their face painted up. It was like a carnival and a concert, part state fair, part athletic event.

Vaas: Power parties. The fans probably enjoyed them as much as anything. As you can imagine, you’d see people in pregame walking through the tailgate section, and they had backpacks just full of beer, serving it to people. It was almost like your driveway air-blower (backpack), but full of beer. Tampa and Seattle might not see that, but they’ll hear about it. The fan involvement in pregame is tremendous.

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Graber: Frankfurt had a power party before every game. It started four hours before the game, and they’d have a minimum of 20,000 people. I don’t know what the hell they did. We had training camp in Tampa, and there’d be a couple hundred Germans at every practice. They’d rent a big truck, had cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. It was nuts.

Menefee: It was Oktoberfest every weekend, basically. It was always a big festival atmosphere, which was so different from everywhere else, and part of the reason that at the end, five of the six teams were in Germany.

Baldinger: They had a hot tub in the end zone. People would win lottery tickets to sit in the hot tub. One year, in the World Bowl, they had a huge elephant come in with the World Bowl trophy around the trunk. Fans were riding the elephant into the stadium. They really knew how to put on a show. All of us — Troy Aikman, Moose Johnston, Bill Maas — all of us that were over there, we enjoyed those games, every game. We’re all sort of connected by our time over there. It was a bonding experience for all of us.

Menefee: (NFL Europe) is such a bond. I saw Kurt Warner in Arizona last week and we talked about NFL Europe. Wherever you go, there’s a connection you always have because of this league and this place, and you always go back to it as soon as you run into someone. It can be a coach, a player, another broadcaster, officials. Walt Anderson, now head of officiating, one of the first times I met him was in a bar at a hotel in Offenbach, Germany, which is where the team hotel was for the Frankfurt Galaxy. One of the first things we go back to is NFL Europe. It’s like you went to high school with somebody, and the memories come flooding back right away. It’s a beautiful thing.

Menefee: When you’re there, you’re going to do beer in Germany. How can you not? Beer and brats. It’s like being in Wisconsin, just a little farther east.

Johnson: Had a few beers. And the beer had a little bit stronger alcohol content to it.

Pratt: First thing I did was order a draft beer, and that was great, but they’d pour it in the glass and the foam comes about halfway, and they’d let it settle, then pour some more in, let it settle. By the time you got your beer, it was 10 minutes. So I started ordering bottled beer. That was easier.

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Phillips: Big beer steins. That was the first time I’d been to Germany. The things you think about Germany in terms of drinking and eating, it was all that you imagined. They had a good time and really enjoyed themselves.

Baldinger: The beer gardens in Dusseldorf are second to none. In Frankfurt, they had one restaurant we’d go to, the Steiner Haus, with a hot stone. They give you this hot stone, and you cook your meat or fish or shrimp or whatever. They had the big steins of beer, very festive. We always had a really good time. Beer is beer. It brings people together, and it’s what they do best. It’s cold, it’s fresh, it’s big. You never stop filling it up.

Arians: My wife and I walked every night, just looked for a beer sign and a pot roast sign. It was a great week.

Dungy: I tried it all. Wanted to experiment with the local food. All the beverages were lukewarm. I’m a cold person. Cold milk, cold water, cold soda. They don’t deal with a lot of ice over there. That was the one thing where I remember thinking, “I don’t know if I could live here.” I’d have to get my own icemaker.

Graber: Anywhere you go, you order a pils, which is a light beer. They were different in every area. I’m not a big drinker, but they were wonderful. The Germans drink a lot of damn beer, but there were very few police, never any issues. Players were treated like celebrities over there.

Baldinger: I would eat schnitzel for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I love schnitzel. The brats, the German food, I like meat. I never understood the little bun with the big brat. You’d have a four-inch bun and a 12-inch bratwurst. I didn’t ever understand that. I loved it.

Vaas: One of the things I love to this day is spargel. It’s white asparagus. We’ll order a meal and get steak and potatoes, but they get spargel and ham, spargel and bacon. It was not a year-round food, but I totally loved that part of it. Whether it’s with butter or with Hollandaise sauce, gosh, it’s good.

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Graber: It was quite amazing, really. A fabulous experience. I’ve never talked to anybody that didn’t love every minute of NFL Europe. It was a tragedy when the NFL dropped it, honestly stupid. It was Tagliabue’s deal, and the new guy came in. Germany would support an NFL team like you couldn’t imagine.

Dungy: People were very hospitable, took great care of us. We didn’t know what to expect. I’d never really done that, didn’t know how the game would be received, but the people were into it, and it was a tremendous experience for our whole group.

Baldinger: I always thought the NFL missed the boat when they played all these games in London. London’s fine, it sells out, it’s real popular, but Germany was where the fan base was for American football.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photo: Alexander Heimann / Bongarts / Getty Images)