Photo Gallery The German Final
Borussia Dortmund fans in their home stadium, the biggest in Germany. Half of Wembley will look like this Saturday night.
Dortmund and Bayern were each allocated 23,000 tickets for Wembley. They were sold almost immediately. London police expect several thousand fans to turn up without tickets: some 500 from Munich and up to 5,000 from Dortmund. But those estimates seem pretty conservative given the interest in the match in Germany. Dortmund fans are famous for their ardor.
The British police are keen to avoid scenes like this from last year, when exuberant Dortmund fans climbed trees to celebrate winning the league title and the DFB German Football Association cup last year.
London has deliberately refrained from putting up big, public-viewing screens because it doesn't want to attract fans who don't have tickets.
But many fans without tickets plan to visit London just to be near their team on the big day. This fan, pictured in May 2012, holds a poster that says 'Thanks Boys!' after Dortmund finished atop the Bundesliga in the 2011/2012 season.
Last year, London's pubs overflowed with people wanting to watch the Champions League final between local club Chelsea and Bayern Munich. This year, interest from locals is likely to be more muted given that it's an all-German final. But the handful of German pubs in the British capital have been fully booked for weeks.
The red-and-white colors of Bayern Munich fans are likely to be equally -- or almost equally -- in evidence on the streets of London this weekend alongside the yellow and black of Dortmund. Here, Bayern fans are seen celebrating their club's league title win in Munich on May 11. The club could manage the coveted triple this year -- league title, Champions League and DFB Cup.
It would make up for the hurt caused by Bayern Munich's narrow defeat on penalties against Chelsea in last year's Champions League final.
Bayern Munich and Dortmund dispatched Barcelona and Real Madrid with such ease in the semi-finals that football pundits are talking about a new era of German dominance in European football -- after Spanish clubs had reigned supreme in recent years.
Some Brits are looking forward with some Schadenfreude to the certain prospect of a German team losing at Wembley on Saturday. After all, it doesn't happen that often. Here, Bayern fans are struggling to come to terms with last year's defeat by Chelsea.
