DENVER — Lifelong sports fan Brian Pimento is allegedly now “all in” for German soccer club Borussia Mönchengladbach despite never previously watching soccer before Colorado’s stay-at-home order.
“Listen, we have a great squad this year with a lot of potential — I’m super excited the boys in green have Marco Rose as the coach now. I think his youth and enthusiasm for this beautiful game will really be what the team needs to finally get over the hump,” said Pimento, fully decked out in team gear. “We’re getting to the Champion’s League this year, baby! Those Leverkusen pieces of shit won’t know what hit them! Mönchengladbach ‘til I die!”
Indeed, Saturday mornings at the Pimento house will be different for the foreseeable future, as the Bundesliga returns to playing “ghost games” without fans present.
“As soon as he found out German soccer would be the first sport back, he dove in headfirst. He binge-watched the season from the beginning so he could ‘figure out the storylines’ and just sort of learn the rules of the game since he has never watched it before in his life,” said Sheena Pimento, Brian’s wife. “He even bought our daughters jerseys of a rival team, so he could scream at them from across the living room.”
“He told them he was gonna ‘beat them Rheinland style,’” added Mrs. Pimento. “Our daughter Chelsea cried for hours.”
For their part, Borussia Mönchengladbach has made headlines for selling cardboard cutouts of fans to put as placeholders in the empty seats — one of which features Brian.
“We have one man from Colorado called Mr. Pimento who bought a cutout of himself for the stadium, yes,” said Bastiaan “Ruud” Hoogesteger, board member of the FPMG Supporters Club in Mönchengladbach, Germany. “He is wearing a generic sweatshirt that reads ‘soccer’ and a Broncos hat, because his kit had not shown up to America by the deadline. We are hoping maybe he waits a few years before he visits us in person. The American healthcare system is not to be trusted.”
At press time, Pimento was crying after Borussia Mönchengladbach’s loss to Leverkusen, after which he promised to install a giant tifo to go on the roof of the house for the upcoming match against Union Berlin.