1. FSV Mainz 05 has lost the appeal against its former player Anwar El Ghazi. The professional is now going on the offensive on social media.
Professional footballer Anwar El Ghazi has verbally retaliated after the legal dispute with his former club 1. FSV Mainz 05. “Apparently the club’s board is not satisfied with regular defeats on the football field, which is why they keep demanding new defeats in German courts!” wrote El Ghazi on social media.
Mainz 05 admitted on Wednesday that their appeal in the El Ghazi case had failed. “We have to accept the decision of the court, which did not see sufficient reasons for immediate dismissal in the behavior and actions of our employee after the heinous attack by Hamas in 2023,” explained Stefan Hofmann, the club and board chairman of the Bundesliga club.
The club terminated the now 30-year-old El Ghazi after a pro-Palestinian Instagram post following the attack on Israel by terrorists on behalf of Hamas on October 7, 2023. In July, the labor court declared the dismissal without notice to be invalid, Mainz went to the Rhineland-Palatinate state labor court – and was rejected.
El Ghazi: “Deluded ones board members”
“I am grateful to the German courts for ensuring justice and seeing through the club’s baseless and nonsensical claims,” wrote El Ghazi. When speaking to the club’s management, he spoke of “deluded board members of FSV Mainz 05”. The chamber interpreted the posts objectively and, after carrying out the necessary balancing of interests, came to the conclusion that in this case freedom of expression outweighed the employer’s interests.
An immediate termination without notice was therefore not justified, it said in the Mainz statement on Wednesday. “In terms of content, however, we are sticking to our position: Based on the values and beliefs that define Mainz 05, the continued employment of people who express themselves and behave in fundamental contradiction to those same principles is ruled out in the future,” Hofmann explained.
Broadcast on Thursday, November 13th, 2025, 6:40 p.m., SWR1 Baden-Württemberg
