Daniel Brändle (29) usually plays amateur football in Pullach, but on Thursday he was playing against the German national team in Wolfsburg. About a commuter between the worlds.
Brändle has made just three appearances in the current Bayernliga season, being substituted twice and once. With Pullach, the midfielder is fighting against relegation in the southern division, with only 16 points after 20 games. “We urgently need to get points in order to have nothing to do with relegation,” says Brändle in an interview with “dfb.de”.
However, the project manager of a sports marketing agency in Munich also leads a “second life” for a few days a year. Brändle is a Liechtenstein national player and has already accumulated 38 caps for the senior team. In his wardrobe hang swapped jerseys of world champion Juan Mata (Spain), European champion Marco Verratti (Italy), Stephan Lichtsteiner (Switzerland), Martin Harnik (Austria) and Sebastian Larsson (Sweden). Brändle is proud of his “small collection”, but he would like to add a DFB jersey to it on Thursday evening.
“I never put all my eggs in the professional football basket “
If his choice falls on a Bayern professional, he may have made it before. “For one of our clients, I sometimes have to deal with FC Bayern and its players, but of course they can’t know that I’m an international player for Liechtenstein,” Brändle says with a grin. He already played his first international match in 2014, but the one against the 2014 world champions was still “very, very special”.
After missing the first leg, in which Liechtenstein came off more than respectably in a 2-0 defeat, Brändle is now looking forward to an “absolute highlight”. The fact that there are not more of these in his life is not a problem for the Vaduz-born amateur. “I never put all my eggs in the professional football basket,” admits Brändle, who celebrates his 30th birthday in January.
Opponents in the Bayernliga would rarely know that he, the 1.72-metre tall Liechtensteiner, is also an international player. “Within my team, everyone knows. They like to tease me when I fail in an action as an international player or when I get tunneled in training. But of course there’s also a lot of positive feedback,” reports Brändle.
This is quite curious. But in the meantime it has almost become normality for me.
In general, though, the commute between the two worlds “sometimes feels pretty gross”. “One day I’m playing in the Bavarian league somewhere in the village. We travel there in our own car and maybe drink a beer or two after a victory”, describes Brändle: “A few days later, the German national team is the opponent in the stadium in Wolfsburg. We drive to the arena in the team bus. Our movements are suddenly watched by numerous cameras and thousands of fans. And afterwards it’s back to amateur football. That’s quite curious. But in the meantime it has almost become normality for me. “
Liechtenstein is “in upheaval “
Liechtenstein are bottom of World Cup qualifying Group J with just one point from eight games and a goal difference of -21. Brändle, who has made four appearances in the qualifiers so far, can therefore save himself the trouble of applying for leave to travel to Qatar. That’s another reason why the result in Wolfsburg “doesn’t play the most important role”. The project manager hopes for “a good performance” and “that we can enjoy this special day a bit”.
Despite having already secured qualification for the World Cup, Liechtenstein does not need to expect gifts from the German team. For Brändle, however, the entire development is in the foreground anyway: “We are in a state of transition and are currently bringing in many young players. That takes some time, but will pay off positively in the long run.”
A performance – and above all a result – like the one in the first leg is not a matter of course. “You have to remember that there will be more amateurs than professionals in our squad for the match against Germany,” says Brändle, referring to himself. A commuter between the worlds