The Yellow Wall: The Südtribüne largest freestanding single-tier grandstand in Europe
In football, there are certain places that standout and become well-known around the world. The Kop at Anfield, for example, was always said to be able to suck the ball into the back of the net for Liverpool whenever they played at home during the era before it became all-seater.
The Curva Sud at the San Siro is dedicated to the most passionate AC Milan supporters, whilst ‘the Jungle’ at Celtic Park did the same thing for Celtic fans in Scotland. Arguably the most iconic of them all, though, is the Südtribüne at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund, better known to most as the ‘Yellow Wall’. Here we’ll tell you all about it.
The Origins of the ‘Yellow Wall’
Whilst most people may imagine that the ‘Yellow Wall’ has been around for years, the opposite is actually true. Although the likes of the Spion Kop at Anfield can be dated back quite far and ‘The Jungle’ at Celtic Park was most famous in the 1960s, the area of the Westfalenstadion that has become well-known all around the world didn’t even get its name until 2009.
At least, that was the first point at which Germany’s most popular football magazine, Kicker, first used the ‘Yellow Wall’ description in its pages. Rather than be a reference to the solidity of the Dortmund Defence under the leadership of Sebastian Kehl, it was about the fans.
It was the words of the club’s goalkeeper at the time, Roman Weidenfeller, that led to the phrase being put in print for the first time and even then it wasn’t because of a home game. The shot-stopper was referencing the 10,000 Borussia Dortmund fans who had travelled to see them play against Eintracht Frankfurt when he said, “It’s incredible; even when we are playing away from home, the Yellow Wall will be there”.
Even then, it wasn’t the kick-start to the phrase being used regularly that most people might imagine. In fact, it took another 21 months before Kicker started to regularly use the expression.
@tntsports The Yellow Wall. What a sight. 💛🖤 #dortmund #bvb #ucl #championsleague
The stand itself underwent its improvement in size in the wake of the club’s Champions League victory in 1997. Having already undergone several size improvements, it was clear that the Westfalenstadion needed further changes to accommodate the number of people who wanted to attend games.
As a result, ‘Die Südtribüne’, which was where the most vocal home fans gathered, was improved to become the largest free-standing grandstand of its kind anywhere in Europe. It allowed the overall capacity to expand to 68,000, with even more improvements coming when Germany won the bid to host the 2000 World Cup.
Jürgen Klopp
Sometimes it takes something special to spark something influential. In the case of BvB and the Yellow Wall, that was the arrival of Jürgen Klopp as the club’s manager. Although Klopp had impressed in terms of what he had achieved at his former club Mainz, it was still the case that the German hadn’t done much of note and was a risky appointment by Dortmund.
His sheer charisma helped to drive the club on, however, inspiring supporters to want to turn up to the stadium in their thousands. The Südtribüne was big enough to host 24,454 people, thanks to Germany’s safe-standing being in place there, putting it just shy of the 30,000 on the standing Kop.
#OnThisDay in 2013, @BVB fans outdid themselves as the Yellow Wall’s choreo brought up a fifty-foot cartoon of Jürgen Klopp as the iconic Champions League music rolled… pic.twitter.com/cEZ8WQZvXw
— MUNDIAL (@MundialMag) April 9, 2021
Klopp completely overhauled Dortmund’s fortunes, with supporters taking to the stand wearing the club’s famous yellow and black shirts, waving flags and scarves and generally creating an intimidating atmosphere. Suddenly it had changed from being an architectural marvel to what felt like a living, breathing place that could influence games thanks to the noise and sight that it created.
Under the inspirational German the Yellow Wall carried Dortmund to their first Bundesliga win in nearly a decade at the end of the 2010-2011 season, defending their crown in the following campaign and making the Champions League final in 2013.
An Influential Stand
There can be little underestimating how important the stand is to Borussia Dortmund, even if it needs to be mixed with a brilliant manager and talented players in order to achieve great things. If you want to get a sense of its position in world football then you need only read the words of Bastian Schweinsteiger, a Bayern Munich midfielder at the time, who was asked whether he feared Dortmund’s players or Jürgen Klopp more.
He said, “It is the Yellow Wall that scares me the most”. The terraces are steep, allowing so many people to cram into them and sing their songs, wave their flags and light their pyro.
It allows atmospheres to be raw, with noise seemingly cascading down the stand onto the pitch in a way that causes opposition players to lose their sense of self. In the 2012-2013 Champions League campaign, when the club made it all the way to the final at Wembley before losing to German rivals Bayern Munich, BvB went unbeaten at home.
Of course it helps that the ticket prices are relatively cheap, as is the cost of beer and food, but being able to get so many people onto one stand makes it the envy of most of Europe. When Tottenham Hotspur built a new stadium, for example, they wanted to make a stand similar to it in nature.
The yellow wall on Dortmund‘s South stand is red & white today and the Turkish fans are making a magnificient racket.
— @Emmas_House (@emmas-house.bsky.social) 2024-06-22T15:35:49.870Z
Nowadays it stands at 328 foot long and 131 foot high, making it one of European football’s most impressive sights. Weidenfeller said of it, “you are the enemy, it crushes you but if you have her at your back as a goalkeeper, it’s a fantastic feeling”. Taking up 75,347 square foot of space, Jürgen Klopp once said of it,
“To exit the dark tunnel and come out into the stadium is to be reborn. You come out and the stadium explodes: out of the darkness and into the light. You look to your left and it looks like 150,000 people are standing there, going crazy”.
The fact that it originally held 12,000 is what makes its influence even more impressive.
