Few take that responsibility more seriously than St. Pauli’s fans. Since 2004, the Ultras St. Pauli group has been visiting refugee camps around Hamburg, bringing clothes, food and lawyers to help the migrants navigate Germany’s complex asylum applications.

“It is a kind of radical way to support a football club; we are not just supporting a football club, but politically, too,” said Lucas, one of the youngest members of the group, which, unlike right-leaning and sometimes violent fan groups, campaigns on issues from racism to gay rights. As is common among members of hard-core European supporter groups, Lucas declined to give his full name.

“It’s why I love this club,” Lucas added. “But German society is divided into two parts. One part supports the refugee struggle and wants to help.” The other, he said, believes the opposite. “They think, ‘We don’t need them; it’s too much; go back home,’ ” he said. “I can’t imagine how these people think.”

One Syrian whom the ultras met in a refugee camp, Megd Abo Amsha, was so taken by their commitment that he joined the group. Nine months ago, after an aborted attempt to reach Western Europe through Moscow shortly after he was drafted into the Syrian army, Amsha, 23, left his home in Damascus, crossed the mountains into Turkey and paid smugglers $6,000 to ferry him across the Mediterranean to Sicily. From there, he said, he took trains across Europe until he arrived in a camp in Hamburg. There, Amsha said, he met members of the Ultras St. Pauli who took him to a match.

“I was really scared,” he said. “I didn’t know who the people were, and I didn’t know what St. Pauli was. I had no idea where these guys were taking me, but when I got here, I found a really positive atmosphere. It felt like family.”