World Cup 2014: German fans take sofas to stadium to watch games in 'giant living room'

FC Union Berlin used 3,500 metres of wallpaper to create a giant lounge

German soccer fans watch the opening game of the World Cup while sitting on sofas in the 1.FC Union stadium in Berlin, Thursday, June 12, 2014. (AP Photo/Axel Schmidt)

Compared to the thrill of watching a football match live at a stadium, being at home on your sofa can feel isolating, while packed pubs are hardly a comfortable place to spend 90 minutes.

Now, FC Union Berlin has thought of a friendly solution to this problem for the Fifa World Cup 2014, by creating a World Cup living room, or Weltmeisterschaft Wohnzimmer.

To make spectators feel at home, the team invited people to bring their own sofas along to screenings of the tournament at its Alte Foersterei stadium in the German capital.

To complete the scene, 1. FC Union Berlin provided 3500 square metres of wallpaper, tables and lamps, the Metro reported.

German football fans watch the opening game of the World Cup 2014 (AP Photo/Axel Schmidt)

Photos from Thursday’s opening match between Brazil and Croatia show around 12,000 Berliners lounging on some 780 sofas, and enjoying the game on the 700-inch big screen as part of an enormous, but ultimately very comfy, crowd.

Gerald Ponesky, who saw his World Cup living concept realised on Thursday, said the idea struck him when he head FC Union Berlin fans singing songs about their favourite team.

“It was always something like ‘my home’ or ‘my living room’, and somehow it clicked,” he told local media.

But according to Berlin newspaper Berliner Zeitung, not every Union fan was impressed with the sofas being stuck in their ground, with some describing the event as "nonsense".

The paper states that a group of more hard-line supporters stole three of the sofas earlier this week and dumped them in the nearby river Wuhle