Cemetery Built for Football Fans

If you've been to England, you've probably come close to being trampled by a roomful of Arsenal fans in full team regalia and face paint. In Spain, you'll see thousands huddled around tiny barroom TV sets on game nights, cheering loud enough to wake the neighborhood – scratch that, the whole country.

Anyone can tell you that Europeans take their football (or soccer, as we Yanks call it) very seriously. But none more so than the football fanatics of Hamburg, Germany: Many of the loyal Germans have traveled thousands of miles to see their home team play, and some of the oldest enthusiasts have held season tickets for 50 years or more. Now, the most rabid of Hamburg's football fans will have the chance to support their favorite team even from the Great Beyond – with a plot in the world's first official football cemetery.

The cemetery, which is being built right next to Hamburg's stadium, is fully football-themed, with an entrance modeled after goal posts, and graves set up like the stands on a football field. The gravestones will be painted the official team colors, blue and white, with flower arrangements to match. The cemetery is still under construction, but fifteen fans have already purchased plots, and hundreds more are sure to follow.

Sure, the concept of a football cemetery may sound a little weird to most of us, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. "If you think about people supporting a club for 30, 40, 50 years, it's part of their life," the cemetery's stonemason, Ui Beppler, told BBC News. "So why shouldn't it be part of their death?"