Fan representative attacks Martin Kind

31

Of course, these weeks are also about football in the arenas of Bundesliga one and two. The crisis has broken out at FC Bayern Munich, the record champions who have reigned for eleven years in a row, and Bayer Leverkusen is preparing to become German champions for the first time.

Read more after the ad

Read more after the ad

Nevertheless, it’s all a minor matter at the moment. Since the 36 professional clubs organized in the German Football League (DFL) decided by a two-thirds majority to grant an investor certain participation rights in return for – according to the request – around one billion euros, nothing has been the same in German professional football. For weeks, parts of the organized fan scene have been protesting against the investors’ plans, throwing tennis balls onto the lawn and causing games to be interrupted in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga. And so a rare sporting television format like “Hard but Fair” is dedicated to current developments in German professional football. And presenter Louis Klamroth asks early on who owns football.

To get this out of the way: Even those discussing the issue cannot give a satisfactory answer to this, admittedly, quite complex question. Martin Kind, the strong man and partner at second division team Hannover 96 for decades, as an enemy of the original German 50+1 rule but ostracized by parts of the fan community as the ultimate evil of football capitalism, is at least trying. He talks about corporations, spectators and players, and then comes to those who are currently protesting, who don’t like him and who he obviously doesn’t like either: “A certain scene claims that it owns football. That’s not possible, that’s not acceptable.”

Read more after the ad

Read more after the ad

Child against Kessen – the other guests stay in the background

This scene is represented in this round by Thomas Kessen, spokesman for the fan association Unser Kurve. He then humorously explains how easy it is to smuggle tennis balls into the stadium. His father used to always forget to leave his pocket knife at home, so it wasn’t that difficult, hehe. “It’s not like we’re entering a correctional facility, but rather a football stadium. There are no limits to creativity,” says the fan representative.

Faced the criticism: Martin Kind on “Hart aber fair” with presenter Louis Klamroth.

Which: ARD

And so the limits are quickly set here in this ARD round, football entrepreneurs – personified by Martin Kind – against football fans – personified by Thomas Kessen. SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, himself a proven football fan despite decades of suffering as a supporter of Arminia Bielefeld, offers himself as a mediator in the group. He has a clear opinion about the tasteless posters in the Hannover 96 fan block, which, among other things, showed children in the crosshairs: “I don’t want us to have a society in which we resolve our conflicts like this.” But he hopes that they will Protests would stop if the DFL clubs would simply vote again on investor involvement, but then please do so transparently as requested by the fans. In general, German football is great. “We have one of the most attractive leagues in the world for spectators, we shouldn’t underestimate that,” says the Social Democrat. He has nothing against the investor, “but we don’t have to go along with every step.” He says this with reference to the English Premier League, where football has long since become a plaything for investors, but where the best players play because of the incredible amount of money.

The other discussants – former world champion Ariane Hingst, former European champion Markus Babbel, “11Freunde” journalist Mia Guethe and the football podcaster Nico Heymer – are relatively unimportant for the continuation of the discussion. A one-on-one between child and Kessen would have been better for the format.

Nobody provides any real solutions

Both argue with the arrogance and self-righteousness of those who know everything better in this case. Kind retreats several times to the point of view that the framework of this talk show is not the right one, for example to deepen a topic that has been touched upon such as the 50+1 rule, which he is so skeptical about. The rules of professional football are indeed complex and probably too complex for this round. At the same time, it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing for understanding the big picture to go into more depth in these areas. This in turn would have required significantly fewer guests.

Read more after the ad

Read more after the ad

So let’s stick with children and kids. The latter is always waiting to confront the former. He even manages to do this a few times, for example when he admits as a child that his own investment in Hannover 96 wasn’t particularly worthwhile, which is why fresh money had to be put into the system. A system that is not self-sustaining is kept alive with money from outside? “That doesn’t make any sense,” replies the fan representative.

Unfortunately, at some point even child withdraws more and more from the discussion. Real solutions that go beyond “vote again” are also not being put forward. It is once again clear that the parties in this dispute have no real basis for discussion, which really makes the future of German football look bleak.

And so the 75 minutes of the show are starting to drag on by the halfway point at the latest. And those who didn’t understand why tennis balls were suddenly flying in the football stadium won’t be much the wiser afterwards. At least they know, because Markus Babbel said so in one of his few contributions, that things cannot continue as they are now.

He is right. By the way, the Bundesliga is on again this weekend.