this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Am I missing context? Why are they refering to a ";)"?
Bayer Leverkusen is seen in Germany as a plastic club by a lot of fans, mostly because they have distanced themselves from their working class roots. They have a family friendly atmosphere and stadium. As a result a part of the ultra fanbase is trying to distance themselves from that clean image by being edgy and coming up with shocking statements.
They have a cult mascot, "der Zitronenmann", they use as a "spokesperson to" say controversial shit trying to get attention and stay relevant. They have provoked and picked fights with rivals as well, mainly Bremen and Koln.
This is not the reason though. Leverkusen is s smallish city, right next to Colone and they allways had a limited draw and were a "smaller club", that never had any major success and whose biggest accomplishment it was to win a match here and there against 1.FC Köln.
When Leverkusen rached the 1st division, in the 80s, FC && Gladbach were two of the biggest clubs in the country and scraped up the fans of the region, pretty much all the Leverkusen fans I know are from the city. From what I know and thats not really, really deep Leverkusen upped their investment, after they survived the fist few years in the league, Bayer invested 2 million deutsche Mark into new players, wich was a lot back then and established themselves as one of the better/top third teams in the league. Fans of other teams then slowly grew to dislike the club, that only had an attendence of around 10k, in a time, where most of the cash clubs made came from selling tickets, being bankrolled by a company, it then became a lot worse, when they were contending in the late 90s, early 2000s.