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'Would be a tough season' - Fans leave Volksparkstadion in silence as Hamburg suffer 2-0 defeat to city rivals St Pauli in Bundesliga

'Would be a tough season' - Fans leave Volksparkstadion in silence as Hamburg suffer 2-0 defeat to city rivals St Pauli in Bundesliga

"Football fans of Hamburg SV (HSV) were seen leaving the team's Volksparkstadion in disappointment on Friday, as hosts fell 2-0 at home to arch-rivals St. Pauli in the Bundesliga's second fixture. Footage captures the fans chanting ahead of the game. After the derby, the Volksparkstadion fell silent, with Hamburg supporters leaving in despair following defeat to city visitors. "If you give up the game in the 76th minute, then I don't know," shared a fan. "Polzin (Hamburg head coach Merlin Polzin) said before the game that there are 50,000 Hamburg fans behind the team. And we want to take the fans with us, without winning. I saw almost nothing of that. So, I'm sorry. It's just way too little. Everyone knew the season would be tough, yes. But that it would be this tough - ouch, ouch," he added. Hamburg's hopes faded after St Pauli's Adam Dzwigala scored in the 19th minute. Despite pushing for an equaliser - including a disallowed effort from Ransford-Yeboah Konigsdorffer early in the second half - the hosts conceded again on the hour mark, falling to a 2-0 defeat. "Good chances, but difficult, right? So it will definitely be tough, just like the last two games, that's how it will be, always," expressed another home supporter. The bitter 2-0 loss to St Pauli marked the first Bundesliga clash between the archrivals since the 2010/11 season. It was also Die Rothosen's first home game in the top division in seven years, ending in disappointment for their fans."

'Would be a tough season' - Fans leave Volksparkstadion in silence as Hamburg suffer 2-0 defeat to city rivals St Pauli in Bundesliga

'Would be a tough season' - Fans leave Volksparkstadion in silence as Hamburg suffer 2-0 defeat to city rivals St Pauli in Bundesliga

"Football fans of Hamburg SV (HSV) were seen leaving the team's Volksparkstadion in disappointment on Friday, as hosts fell 2-0 at home to arch-rivals St. Pauli in the Bundesliga's second fixture. Footage captures the fans chanting ahead of the game. After the derby, the Volksparkstadion fell silent, with Hamburg supporters leaving in despair following defeat to city visitors. "If you give up the game in the 76th minute, then I don't know," shared a fan. "Polzin (Hamburg head coach Merlin Polzin) said before the game that there are 50,000 Hamburg fans behind the team. And we want to take the fans with us, without winning. I saw almost nothing of that. So, I'm sorry. It's just way too little. Everyone knew the season would be tough, yes. But that it would be this tough - ouch, ouch," he added. Hamburg's hopes faded after St Pauli's Adam Dzwigala scored in the 19th minute. Despite pushing for an equaliser - including a disallowed effort from Ransford-Yeboah Konigsdorffer early in the second half - the hosts conceded again on the hour mark, falling to a 2-0 defeat. "Good chances, but difficult, right? So it will definitely be tough, just like the last two games, that's how it will be, always," expressed another home supporter. The bitter 2-0 loss to St Pauli marked the first Bundesliga clash between the archrivals since the 2010/11 season. It was also Die Rothosen's first home game in the top division in seven years, ending in disappointment for their fans."

Rufus Wainwright: 'Our Rights Are Being Decimated, We Have To Unite'

Rufus Wainwright: 'Our Rights Are Being Decimated, We Have To Unite'

Rufus Wainwright is getting reflective about his breakthrough moment ahead of his next UK tour Over the last 30 years, Rufus Wainwright has grown from being a singer-songwriter with a loyal cult following to a critically-acclaimed, multi-instrumental, Grammy-nominated musician, collaborating with some of the biggest names in the industry, contributing songs to some of the most beloved films of the 21st century and even composing two operas and a stage musical. Still, despite all he’s accomplished, and all the accolades he’s received, Rufus admits he’s still had moments where he’s pondered where his career could have taken him had he been more willing to compromise when it comes to his art. “For a long time, I was resentful that I didn’t have massive number one hits, and wasn’t making billions of dollars or being chased down the street by screaming fans,” he tells HuffPost UK. “I just wanted all the perks of that type of stardom.” Fortunately, these thoughts subside quickly when he revisits some of his earliest work, and feels “relieved” at how strong even the older material still sounds today. Next month, Rufus will bring his Want Symphonic tour across the pond to his British fans, performing tracks from his breakthrough album Want One and its follow-up Want Two (released in 2003 and 2004, respectively) alongside a full-scale orchestra. Revisiting the material on both albums for the show, he’s now glad he stuck to his guns, rather than chasing commercial success. Rufus Wainwright on his Want Two tour in 2005. He's now revisiting this material 20 years later on his next UK tour “It feels like yesterday when those albums were first coming out,” Rufus says, remarking with a laugh that “one of the shocking revelations about getting older is just how quickly everything passes, even though at the time it seems interminable”. “That’s kind of the melancholic part. But the joyous part is that I do believe the songs still stand up. “I was kind of well-known at the time for being pretty persnickety in terms of my production and spending multitudes of hours on my material, and I think that investment is now paying off, because the material is pretty solid. So, it’s fun to be able to lean on those columns that I constructed years ago.” Want One represented not just a breakthrough in terms of Rufus’ profile in the music world, especially internationally, but also a “triumphant return” after a turbulent period in his personal life, including a month-long stay in rehab due to an addiction to crystal meth. Many of the songs on both Want One and Want Two directly address what was going on in Rufus’ life during this time, but that’s never made it hard for him to revisit. In fact, for Rufus, he describes the “Want One return” as “very well-illustrated by the cover” in which he is depicted as a “knight in shining armour, a positive figure”. “I actually very much need to rely on that version of myself now, as the light darkens in this world, and we’re all faced with other issues,” he claims. “That was Rufus at his prime, and so that gives me strength.” Rufus Wainwright on the cover of his album Want One, an image he says he still tries to channel today Both of the Want albums won critical acclaim and introduced Rufus to a whole new audience, but they were also well-received by some of the musicians that he looked up to when he was starting out as a musician. After Want One was released, Sir Elton John hailed Rufus as the “ greatest songwriter on the planet”, while David Bowie was similarly effusive , singling out stand-out track Dinner At Eight as proof that the Canadian-American star was “ simply one of the great writers”. “I don’t think I was aware how insane that was,” Rufus says of the praise he received from some of the industry’s biggest names, before swiftly nothing: “Thankfully! I think if maybe I’d been a little too reverent of the situation I would have, I don’t know, affected adversely.” “Because I was just so into myself,” he says, pausing to laugh again. “And into doing what I wanted to do, I accepted the compliment, but I didn’t treat it as some sort of emblem or anything. “Now I look back and I’m like, ‘wow that was pretty amazing’. Thank God I didn’t think that at the time…” Want One’s release notably also came at a time when Rufus was one of only a handful of mainstream queer artists who had been out since the beginning of their careers. Perhaps surprisingly, Rufus says it never “felt lonely” to be one of only a few openly LGBTQ+ musicians of his generation at that time, and admits that there were times he “enjoyed being ‘the only gay in the village’” and felt “proud of that title”. Rufus Wainwright is in a reflective era – but is also looking ahead to the future “That being said,” he goes on to say, there were certain milestones he felt like he missed out on compared to his straight peers. “What I did notice, and what I was a little jealous of, was there was this kind of ‘combination of powers’ that a lot of other celebrities would create, where they would create these ‘power couples’, and therefore kind of merge their audiences,” he explains. “That’s so common in Hollywood. “I didn’t have a movie star I could date. So actually, career-wise, I felt a little undervalued, because I couldn’t create a gay power couple. There’s a total system there that I couldn’t be a part of.” While putting together his self-titled debut album in the late 1990s, Rufus made it clear it was always his intention to be open about his sexuality, something he acknowledges now was a “very brave thing to do”. “At the time, I did it out of fear, and the main fear was because of AIDS,” he says. “AIDS was still pretty rampant, and I had grown up with the whole Rock Hudson and Liberace scenario, where you had these gay men dying in shame and not being able to have a moment of acceptance [before their deaths]. I just didn’t want to end up in that boat, you know? “Let’s say I made an album, and I became famous, and then I became HIV+, I didn’t want to have to have my coming out and my death happen simultaneously. If both were going to happen, I wanted them to happen separately. I know that sounds pretty morbid, but the times kind of were like that.” Though Rufus being out as gay undoubtedly made him a role model to many at that time, he’s insistent that wasn’t his motivation at the time. “It wasn’t heroic, like, ‘I’m going to be out of the closet and I’m going to be this sort of hero’,” he maintains. On top of everything else, he adds: “I’m also a terrible liar… I’m a bad poker player, so I just don’t think I would have been able to navigate the duplicitous nature of that whole thing. “And I wanted to get laid! Most of all, I wanted to get laid.” Since those days, Rufus has seen the music industry change exponentially, which is something he has mixed feelings about. Rufus Wainwright performing at Hollywood Food Coalition's Kitchen Sink Festival in December 2024 “It’s become far too commercial, it’s also somewhat predictable in terms of people either imitating each other or trying to top each other,” he states. “It is all about making money.” There are certain new acts that make him feel optimistic about the future of music, though, especially after being introduced to some when he was invited to perform with super-producer Jack Antonoff at the Newport Folk Festival earlier in the summer. “Jack told me, ‘there are so many young artists now who really, really appreciated your work growing up, and really considered you a guiding light in terms of sticking to your guns artistically and remaining true to yourself’,” Rufus shares. “And I’m starting to see those little flowers start to blossom a little bit. And so, I am hopeful.” Of the artists he’s particularly impressed by right now, he names Weyes Blood and Cameron Winter (“this new guy that everyone is comparing to me, which I’ve heard and I understand on one hand, but I also think he’s completely unique”). He also admits to being  as much “on the Chappell Roan bandwagon” as the rest of the world and, perhaps unexpectedly, names newcomer Addison Rae as “pure pop magic”, and someone who is “getting me excited about pop again”. Rufus Wainwright and Jack Antonoff at the 2024 Grammys It’s difficult to imagine it in a landscape that now features artists across different generations and genres across all the echelons of success identifying as LGBTQ+, with Sam Smith , Billie Eilish , Lil Nas X and the aforementioned Chappell Roan are racking up multiple number one singles, Troye Sivan , Janelle Monáe , Renée Rapp and Tyler The Creator are filling arenas all over the world, and other new acts like Self-Esteem , Ethel Cain and Orville Peck are shifting the dial in their own ways, but even as recently as 20 years ago, you’d be hard pressed to find a pop star who was open about their LGBTQ+ identities, with even fewer going on to achieve mainstream success. Rufus also says that, for queer artists in particular, the industry is “certainly a lot better than it was” when he first started out. “Unfortunately,” he quickly adds, this coincides with a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation being enacted in the United States and beyond. “The way the world is going, gay rights – and human rights in general – are just being decimated here in the United States,” he laments. “I do hope that there will be some kind of like… political, social, joint effort to combat the forces of evil within the queer, gay, lesbian, trans community. I think we have to unite. I’m not totally sensing that all the way, yet, but I’m hoping that will happen. In these moments of turmoil, it really is community that makes all the difference.” Rufus then agrees that many of the arguments being used against trans people in the current climate are remarkably similar to those used to demonise gay and bisexual people in the 20th century. “My experience with the trans community has been so incredible in the sense that I’ve learned so much along the way,” he shares. “There are certain ideas that I had, preconceived notions that I was brought up with, theories that I concocted, that were really challenged and really transformed into something more compassionate, and something more modern in a lot of ways, through my relationships with trans people. “Unfortunately, that’s the toughest thing for humans to accept, that they have to change. But once it happens, it’s called evolution. So… let’s evolve.” Rufus Wainwright on stage at a concert for the LA LGBT Center in 2019 Despite an “attempt” from the current political powers to move things into the past, Rufus points out that “there’s also resistance”. “For real change and real shifts in humanity, there has to be a battle,” he claims. “It’s not just going to happen. It’s not legislated and then – boom! – it’s there. There has to be a struggle. And so, now we are struggling. But that is actually what has to happen. So, here we go…” Continuing on the nostalgia trip that arguably got going in the pandemic, when he began his online “Quarantunes” performances (which went on to inspire his A Rufus-Retro-Wainwright-Spective), Rufus is also set to revisit another pinnacle moment in his career next year, when he brings back his Rufus Does Judy concert for one night at London’s Royal Albert Hall , billed as the last time he’ll ever do the show in the UK. Inspired by Judy Garland ’s iconic Carnegie Hall concert, the event sees Rufus performing the exact same setlist as the Hollywood icon. He first performed the show in 2006, and has revived it multiple times over the years. “I always come back to her,” he says of the screen and stage legend. “I think she’s my number one because she hits the mark on several levels, you know? Whether it’s her singing, her choice of material, her sense of humour, her beauty in a lot of ways – and also her kind of traumatic story. I like Judy 100% on all fronts. “Peggy Lee was probably a better singer than Judy in certain ways, at least in terms of her precision and stuff like that. But I’d rather hang out with Judy, you know? She’s the whole package.” As for bringing back Rufus Does Judy for one last London show, Rufus says: “I want to celebrate the whole phenomenon, and that repertoire, with the kind of physical prowess that I still have now in my early 50s… and not have it turn into this act for an old person’s home, you know? “I just want to go out with a positive bang.” Rufus Wainwright on stage during his Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall concert in 2016 But aside from his Want Symphonic and Rufus Does Judy shows, the Out Of The Game singer is still very much focussed on the future, too. “I’ve hit the middle-mark, hopefully,” he says of his recent period of reflection. “And so, I am starting to have a sense of perspective on what’s happened, and also what I would like to happen in the future. “So, yes, now is the time to reflect for sure. And to strategise and also discard and accept, as well.” Case and point, last year saw Rufus trying his hand at his first ever musical theatre show, penning the songs for a West End production of the cult film Opening Night. It’s well-documented that Opening Night was a somewhat troubled production, which ended up closing early after mixed reviews and low ticket sales . “I experienced a kind of classic fall from grace in the West End,” Rufus remarks, insisting that, all the same: “I in no way consider it a negative experience. It taught me so much.” He admits: “It wasn’t easy! I suffered greatly, but that’s what happens when you’re an artist. “In a lot of ways, it’s a really important notch to have on my belt, because it is from your defeats that you learn the most.” Rufus Wainwright with Opening Night's leading lady Sheridan Smith in 2024 Rufus also points out that the show did get some four-star reviews, “so there were definitely fans of the work”, and highlights working with the show’s actors, specifically nami leading lady Sheridan Smith , as a highlight of the experience. “I do feel, actually, that it will go down as sort of this mysterious sort of production that people will wish they’d had a chance to have their own opinion about, you know?” he notes. Opening Night has certainly not put Rufus off working within the musical theatre space in the future, and he’s adamant that it’s an artform he will return to, as well as one day hoping to write the score for a film. “That’s down the line,” he clarifies. “But I think a classic Rufus Wainwright film score would be a fun thing to do.” Before all of that, though, Rufus’ more immediate plans are to “hunker down” and return to the studio for what he describes as his next “pop record”. “I’ve had it with opera and musicals and Judy,” he jokes. “not that I don’t love those things and won’t return to them – but that’s my original bread and butter, so I’m very excited to get back into the studio and focus on that 100%. It’s high time I return to my day job.” Rufus Wainwright – pictured here on stage at Glastonbury in 2022 – has made it clear to fans he's ready to go back to his "day job" after pursuing other creative avenues It’s fitting, then, that Rufus will be spending time in the UK next month, revisiting the music that helped make a name for him here more than two decades ago. His main emotion when he dives back into the earlier years of his back catalogue? “I am just relieved, because I did work so hard on the music,” he says. “Really, the first quarter of my career was all about the songs and the singing and the tracks, you know? “I was never good at getting a great video made – although I’ve made some nice ones – and I was never good at knowing exactly what my fashion was, who I should be dating. It was really all about the music. And I am very relieved now, because I can sing those songs and they stand up.” Rufus Wainwright will bring his Want Symphonic shows to the UK in September. Find tickets here . Rufus Does Judy will return to London’s Royal Albert Hall for one final show in June 2026. READ MORE: Rosie O’Donnell: ‘I Look At America, And I Feel Overwhelmingly Depressed’ Jake Shears: 'It Really Feels Like The World Might Need Scissor Sisters Again' Self Esteem: ‘I Achieved Everything I Set Out To Do, And I Was Sadder Than Ever’