Vor the conference of the state interior ministers, which begins this Wednesday in Bremen, clubs and football fans across the country have come together. This is quite surprising, as just a year and a half ago the dispute over the investor deal planned by the German Football League (DFL) had cut off communication channels in many places. Now, for example, we hear that there was recently a meeting of all Bavarian first and second division clubs in Augsburg, at which high-ranking club representatives and the clubs’ largest ultra groups exchanged views on their stance on the Interior Minister’s meeting. A statement from five Baden-Württemberg professional clubs (VfB Stuttgart, 1. FC Heidenheim, SC Freiburg, TSG Hoffenheim and Karlsruher SC) also documented great unity between the fan scene and the clubs.
Nationwide, both sides have a completely different perception than politicians when it comes to the security situation around the stadiums. The five Southwest clubs are asking for the debate to be “objectified”; In view of the current statistics based on police information, which show a decline in violence, they warn against “watering can stadium bans” and call for “more willingness to engage in dialogue”. A similar argument is made at 1. FC Nürnberg, where board members Niels Rossow and Alexander Sperber, as representatives of the “Nuremberg North Curve”, particularly emphasize the similarities in an interview with the SZ. At the most recent FCN general meeting, Rossow had already criticized the Interior Minister’s plans and received “huge applause” for them: “Not just from the organized fans,” as he emphasizes, “but from the majority of the 1,600 people present.”
:Ultras against Interior Minister
The fan scenes in German football agree: They consider the political measures to be excessive. The resistance is particularly directed against personalized tickets.
In the past few days, politicians seem to have turned away from their maximum demands. Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) surprised people at the weekend by saying that the demand for personalized tickets would not be discussed at the conference starting on Wednesday. His Saxon colleague Armin Schuster (CDU) had explicitly renewed the demand just a few days earlier. But what remains at least is the second controversial point: the planned tightening of the stadium ban guidelines. Insiders believe that the demand for this to be imposed centrally by a nationwide commission in the event of an investigation is more relevant than ever. They are counting on the fact that the interior ministers have shelved one of their heart’s desires in order to enforce the other more strictly.
At the club in Nuremberg this would be considered fatal. “If I claim that someone stole my car key in the stadium, the police will initiate proceedings that can take a year,” explains Sperber: “Then it turns out that I lied – and they still had a one-year ban from the stadium.” Rossow also thinks that the current practice has proven successful: the club, police and fan representatives talk about each individual case separately – that’s how it works nationwide so far. At least in Franconia there is no chatter, emphasizes Rossow: “The Nuremberg police would certainly confirm that. We have excellent cooperation here with both them and the fan scene.” This has demonstrably made the stadium “even safer,” he says: “If that is categorically denied, I have no understanding of it.”
“In relation to the number of spectators, the number of injuries is negligible,” says Nuremberg’s managing director
Clubs and fans also agree on their fundamental recognition that there is actually no problem of violence in the stadiums: “650,000 people come to our games every year, which is more than the population of Nuremberg,” says Rossow. “In relation to this, the number of injuries is negligible. There are completely different numbers in other areas of society.” Sperber also sees populism at work on the political side. The times when excited hooligans fought wild battles in the stadiums are over: “Football is now a sport for everyone. The eighties will not come back.”
In principle, the interior ministers do not deny this. One could almost get the impression these days that some people would like to implement the demand of “Our Curve” spokesman Thomas Kessen and “discontinue the process due to lack of need”. But the fronts have now become so hardened that a policy backtrack would probably be interpreted as a loss of face. For this reason alone, the summit will probably decide on at least some tightening measures. However, it is doubtful that they will change anything about the actual problem: many fan statements these days read as if politicians have accused football of violence for no reason.
But arranged fights and bus robberies really do exist. The only difference is that they don’t take place in the stadium or its surroundings, but often hundreds of kilometers away from the venue – and completely independent of the match day. It is doubtful whether the proposed measures will have any effect. But maybe it’s not just about the matter – but about a test of strength with the active fan scene. Uli Hoeneß, for example, believes that there must be limits to their right to help shape club politics. At the weekend he accused the Ultras of wanting to “determine football themselves”. And he put forward a thesis that one might find interesting with the first division club Eintracht Frankfurt: “All the clubs where these ultras are in charge,” said Hoeneß, have “become second-class: Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Schalke.”
In the current security debate, however, the fronts are different than Hoeneß perceived. Even at the weekend, the vast majority of all stadium goers expressed their solidarity with the fan protests – although not all of them are fans of pyrotechnics.
Nuremberg managing director Rossow has the impression that the ultra scene has recently been branded too broadly. Many clubs often perceive the ultras as strenuous and demanding – but also as willing to compromise and as an important factor in club life. “Football,” says the club managing director, “is also so popular because the largest youth culture makes a decisive contribution to the fascination of the stadium experience.” In any case, there is “great agreement at the DFL level that the best way is to involve everyone who is of good will from the start.” Sperber believes that failing to do this was one of the most serious mistakes in politics: “The ministers made the same mistake that the DFL made a year and a half ago. They also underestimated the force of our resistance back then.”