Germany crowd singing John Denver's 'Country Roads' earns love from Chris Godwin, NFL Twitter

Jacob Camenker

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Germany crowd singing John Denver's 'Country Roads' earns love from Chris Godwin, NFL Twitter image

The NFL's first game in Germany was seemingly a smash hit, and the 69,811 fans on hand at Munich's Allianz Arena are to thank for that.

The crowd provided the Seahawks and Buccaneers alike great energy throughout the contest, consistently cheering on big plays and touchdowns during Tampa Bay's 21-16 victory.

Their engagement was noticed by the players, as Chris Godwin pointed out after the game came to an end.

"Nobody's left yet. It's amazing. It's really, really amazing," Godwin said of the crowd on NFL Network. "You can tell how enthused they were to have American football here, and they really showed out.

I'm grateful to be a part of this first game. It's beautiful.

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The best moment from the crowd came as the contest neared its conclusion. At around the two-minute warning, the fans on hand broke out into a rendition of one of John Denver's most famous songs: "Take Me Home, Country Roads." It rang throughout the arena and was easy to hear in the background of the game broadcast.

"Country Roads" may be best associated with the state of West Virginia, but it has an international appeal. Notably, it is a popular sing-along song at Oktoberfest events in Munich, so it shouldn't be a big surprise that the German fans broke that one out to honor the arrival of an American sport.

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Still, NFL fans, media personalities and other professional athletes were delighted with the crowd's enthusiastic rendition of the song. Even West Virginia, which has adopted the tune as a part of its athletic tradition, weighed in on it.

Here are some of the best reactions to the performance along with a few other great moments from the crowd in Germany.

Needless to say that the atmosphere in Munich was terrific. That will make it easy for the NFL to justify returning to Germany in future seasons.

Jacob Camenker

Jacob Camenker Photo

Jacob Camenker first joined The Sporting News as a fantasy football intern in 2018 after his graduation from UMass. He became a full-time employee with TSN in 2021 and now serves as a senior content producer with a particular focus on the NFL. Jacob worked at NBC Sports Boston as a content producer from 2019 to 2021. He is an avid fan of the NFL Draft and ranked 10th in FantasyPros’ Mock Draft Accuracy metric in both 2021 and 2022.