St Pauli: Cult Heroes
- Graham Dunn
- Jan 23, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2025
Few teams embody football’s counterculture like St Pauli football club, Cult Heroes from Hamburg. Nestled beside the Reeperbahn, St Pauli have turned punk spirit, social activism, and anti-fascist values into their identity. Their skull-and-crossbones emblem, ethical kit policy, and one-member-one-vote co-operative make them a global symbol of what football can stand for beyond the pitch.
On the face of it there is very little reason why German side St Pauli should stand out.
St Pauli sit 15th in the German Bundesliga, one place and seven points clear from relegation trouble. While they are on course to retain their top-level status, which they won back last year for the first time in more than a decade, there seems little danger of them impacting the higher echelons of the Bundesliga.
They are every Guardian-reading, liberal-minded, football fan’s cult club of choice
Neither is there a great football heritage of the past. They have made sporadic appearances in the top flight, but generally have dwelt outside German’s football elite. They are not even the most successful team in Hamburg.
However, it is their achievements and identity off the pitch that lifts St Pauli beyond the norm. A socially and ethically active club, which plays on the punk sub-culture of its surroundings for much of its identity, they are every Guardian-reading, liberal-minded, football fan’s cult club of choice.
St Pauli is located the proverbial stone’s throw off Hamburg’s once notorious Reeperbahn and visitors to its Millerntor Stadium – and they come from all over the world in great number – will find a ground which, while renovated in the last decade, still fits into its surrounds (not an easy trick when there is a giant fun fair next to the ground).
Significantly St Pauli fans have driven this evolution of the club’s identity. An alternative fan culture emerged in the 1980s, a left-leaning social activism that grew as a response to hooliganism and its association with far-right groups that engulfed the game at the time. This has resulted in a strong stance against fascism, sexism and homophobia.
However equally important is the atmosphere at matches and that too has been driven by the fans. That includes the skull and crossbones as an unofficial emblem for the club, grown out of fans bringing the Jolly Roger flags to games. This identify and culture was adopted by the club owners and has become part of its DNA of St Pauli.
St Pauli’s cult status and match atmosphere mean they have become an international draw – with an estimated 500 fan clubs globally - and they continue to wear their heart on the sleeves, almost literally in the case of their ethical and statement kit choices. Indeed in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, unable to secure a kit manufacturer that met the club’s sustainability values, they produced the kit themselves under the D:IY label.
The club’s image has also been picked up by wider punk culture itself. St Pauli’s highly identifiable shirts – they are one of the few teams to play in brown – are regularly seen worn by band members across the punk and related scenes, perhaps mostly notably by US rockers Gaslight Anthem.
Not that a social conscience and wide cult following necessarily equates to football, or even financial, success. St Pauli’s previous single season appearances in the Bundesliga in 2001 and 2010 bookended near financial collapse and they were not to return until the top flight until this season.
Having rejoined the elite, the club have taken steps to secure their financial future - but have done so in typical St Pauli fashion by becoming the first professional Germany football to found a football co-operative under a one-member, one-vote principle.
And as if there was doubt about the the club’s ethos and values, it in November underlined these credentials by doing what every left-leaning, liberal thinker did, by becoming the first German football club to leave X and join Blue Sky.
Ranking
We have five categories of greatness from our five-star All-Time Greats category at the top to our one-star Blinkered Greats category at the bottom. There was a split judgement here, but I pulled rank and argued they were the epitome of.
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BLINKERED GREATS
Listen to the full podcast:
Join Graham Dunn and Jamie Rooney as they explore the unique world of St Pauli, the punk-powered club that stands against fascism and commercialism while keeping football’s soul alive.
Further listening
How about Hamburg’s other team? Back in the late 1970s Hamburg were making waves and European finals, led off the pitch by flawed genius coach Branco Zebec and on the pitch by flawed genius coach in-waiting Kevin Keegan. This is a great story, albeit told relatively quickly, as it was in our early days when we thought could we could do three teams each week (and I decided to dedicate most of the podcast talking about the invasion of the Parkas at Hereford in 1972).
How do you follow a career high of helping Oxford United gain promotion to the Championship. In the case Oxford loanee Finn Stevens, it was to leave Brentford for St Pauli. From what I can tell, there is not much to add beyond that, as it looks like so far he has swapped Brentford reserves for St Pauli reserves with just one Bundesliga appearance so far.
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