An Introduction to Me

SC Paderborn 07 (English) logo

In May of 2020, SC Paderborn became everyone’s favourite Bundesliga underdog when the league returned after the COVID-19 outbreak. They had no foreign-speaking social media account (the only club in the Bundesliga at the time). I decided to create an English-speaking fan account, as it felt like the perfect way to combine my Paderborn passion with a dream of breaking into sports journalism. The rest, as they say, was history!

I was born in England in the mid-2000s, but my connection to SC Paderborn started early. I have family living in Paderborn, and received jerseys as birthday gifts. I still own the collection of black and blue jerseys which are hiding somewhere. Little did I know that Paderborn would become a much bigger part of my life.

Fast forward to the present day, and while my sports journalism dream didn’t work out (I chose another sector in the end — but the door is never closed), I still sit back with pride at the English Paderborn account that I created. The support I’ve received has been quite overwhelming, with over 1,800 followers on X and 1.5 million engagements in the past 12 months. The community that has been built around the account keeps me going. Those people know who they are, and I appreciate them.

Dreams are good, and healthy, but without 100% dedication and a lot of free work, breaking in to the sports journalism world is nigh-on-impossible. There are many different reasons why I didn’t end up pursuing this, even if it still remains a dream job to this day. Still, the account began well in May 2020. It even got me mentioned by @CursedFootball (better known as ‘football images that precede unfortunate events’) during Paderborn’s winless run in their final nine matches of the season. Humour was the best policy.

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Paderborn needed a miracle to stay up, and while that never came, none of it mattered. By that point, the account had grown to around 600–700 followers, and the vibes were incredible. Did I know I had some skill at this? Yeah. But I was still very young, and without much experience.

I had a go at a podcast for a while, some writing, but there was one thing which always remained consistent — the tweets. I found it had the best engagement, a beat-style which I thought was my best skill. A mix of serious, reliable tweeting which kept fans informed. I also wanted to sprinkle in a few jokes.

This seemed to be the best way of growing the account (and, I think the club too) whilst maintaining a professional tone 99% of the time. The 1% is the jokes, like the funny videos featuring our goal song Hermann Löns, die Heide brennt, which I post whenever we win.

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I am probably far away from being a perfect representative of SC Paderborn, but I don’t want or try to be perfect. I get mistaken for being an ‘official’ club account quite often, and I understand it. My objective has been simple from the start: provide news about Paderborn in a way that is digestible for a fan who has started to support the club when they read the tweet, Instagram, Facebook post. After nearly five years, I’m quite pleased with my results.

This article is also a personal announcement. I will be bringing back the SC Paderborn 07 English Podcast, of which the last episode was uploaded in April 2022. It’s safe to say my life has calmed down quite significantly since I chose to stop posting the podcast — I no longer have the burden of school exams on my mind, and it’s also quite an exciting time at Paderborn, with many interesting topics to discuss. I hope to bring back some of the familiar names which helped me with the podcast previously, and perhaps get some new ones on too. I hope it is a good addition to the coverage on here and everyone enjoys it.

The articles won’t stop, too. I am hoping to speak to some SCP07 players over the next few weeks and conduct an interview with them. I can also promise some discussions with prevalant Paderborn fan accounts, where we will analyse the Hinrunde, the transfer window and our wishes for the Rückrunde. Overall, things seem very exciting over on our little corner of the internet at the moment.

Thanks for reading. Nur der SCP!