Berlin – Football fans are not criminals! This chorus can often be heard from fan curves in football stadiums, when there is fire being fired with pyrotechnics, and stewards with luminous vests intervene half-heartedly. The German Football Association (DFB) sees this behavior of the fans as punishable and imposes heavy fines – on the clubs that would not have prevented the fury. Fourth division club Carl Zeiss Jena sued the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) against this – and was unsuccessful on Thursday. A punishment is permissible as a preventive measure even without the association’s fault, according to the judges.
It is wrong to be convicted for something that you haven’t done yourself, think many clubs, especially from the third and fourth leagues, with fines of 10,000 euros harder than federal or second division clubs who pay it out of the postage. But are the clubs so blameless?
Many clubs like to brag about the great atmosphere in the stadium, where the atmosphere often attracts the spectators rather than the high-quality performances on the pitch. For many, Bengalo torches are obviously part of it. Also because the clubs secretly don’t think that’s too bad, they like to hire fans as stewards at low prices, who only half-heartedly scan other fans for souvenirs at the entrance. How do the clubs intend to seriously identify individual perpetrators and pass the penalties on to them? Especially since private individuals still rarely have tens of thousands of euros left over than fourth division football clubs.
The clubs should be more careful not to go too far. After all, it is they who call their fans to games and therefore also bear responsibility for safety. Instead, the police often step in there when things get serious. Just like before the stadiums. All at the expense of the taxpayer. Why don’t the clubs pay for it themselves? Because they would then need much more professional and expensive folders.
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