Ironically, in the year of the referees, the latest incidents of violence are frightening. Do the DFB appeals for respect and fair play come to nothing?
It is a great honor for Sophie Burkhart when the 22-year-old referee is allowed to carry the trophy onto the pitch before the women’s DFB Cup final between VfL Wolfsburg and SC Freiburg (Thursday 4.45 p.m. / live ARD). The Cologne stadium is more crowded than ever at this event, and the Mainz native is also the focus of attention before kick-off because she usually officiates football games on a smaller scale.
Burkhart (“how cool is it that i can do this”) usually whistles in the men’s B-Junior Bundesliga or Landesliga. The spotlight is turned on for them to raise awareness “to sharpen the role of referees in Germany and their declining number and at the same time to ensure that there is more understanding and respect for the referees”, according to the German Football Association (DFB). The largest individual sports association in the world has proclaimed the “Year of the Referee”.
A father threatened a young referee to ‘behead him’
The need for action is great. The brutalization of morals did not stop just because the DFB pressed the start button for the wide-ranging campaign. Negative highlight: the incidents at the district cup final of the C youth teams between the two Frankfurt clubs FC Germania 1911 Enkheim and FC Kalbach on May 1st of this year.
After the final whistle, a father of the defeated Kalbacher ran onto the field and threatened the underage referee to behead him. The case made waves nationwide because the Frankfurt referee association published the sequence filmed by a cell phone camera on Instagram. The video spread in no time at all, causing consternation nationwide – and a heated argument between the officials at the amateur level.
Goran Culjak posted the video online
The Frankfurt referee chief Goran Culjak had decided on his own authority to put the violent verbal attack on the net. Culjak has been leading the largest association in Hesse, with 300 referees, since 2020. As a result, the Frankfurt district football manager Rainer Nagel initially scolded that the video had been published without consultation.
In the meantime, the Hessian Football Association (HFV) has taken on the case, which will be heard before the association’s sports court on May 25th. It is a precedent that is most discussed behind the turbulence of Eintracht Frankfurt at all football regulars in the Rhine-Main region. With appropriate media support. “Lonely at the whistle” was the headline in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” and the “Frankfurter Rundschau” described the sometimes outrageous conditions on amateur soccer fields in a report.
It’s no longer just isolated cases
Culjak, who has been officiating amateur games himself for almost a quarter of a century, is convinced he had to act. “We referees are not adequately protected. We no longer want to be the necessary evil, we want to be a respected part of football. We have games abandoned every week.”he said and demanded: “The associations must finally act. Every coach, player, official and club must know: physical violence will no longer be tolerated.”
The man gets really angry when talking about regrettable individual cases: “The fact is that the attacks on referees are more of a weekly rule.” If you take the number of 2,400 attacks on referees published by the DFB and assume 40 weekends with games, you have 60 incidents per weekend. “Quite a few isolated cases, right?” held Culjak and asked: “Does a referee have to bleed, be taken to the hospital, possibly be dead on the pitch?”
The number of cancellations is higher than ever before
At the grassroots level, the problems have generally increased. In the 2021/2022 season, 1,219,397 out of 1,455,416 games played were recorded with an online game report. 5,582 incidents were reported in the recorded lots, of which 3,544 were acts of violence and 2,389 were cases of discrimination. Since 2014, the DFB has had an overview of the situation in amateur football based on online match reports from referees. Never before have so many games had to be abandoned in one season.
The dropout rate is terrifying
The consequences for German refereeing are fatal. Fewer and fewer still do the job on the whistle. Ten years ago, the DFB reported more than 70,000 referees, but the number is shrinking every year. The deficit is particularly great among women, who hardly dare to enter this profession at all. Of the now only 50,505 referees (season 2021/22), only 1989 are female – less than four percent. In hardly any ball sport is the rate so bad.
Furthermore, more referees quit each year than start a new one. 6,711 newcomers compared to 11,237 who announced their resignation last season. Gives a terrifying dropout rate. Many wanted to take part in the “most beautiful thing in the world” with lofty intentions, only to realize with a sobering smile that they are just lightning rods for the aggression that many players on the sports field and often enough unleash on the referee. Football isn’t the only country with this problem, but experts say it’s particularly common here.
DFB Vice President Ronny Zimmermann agrees social problem
“We have a social problem in dealing, respect and behavior. This is reflected not least in football”, criticized the responsible DFB Vice President Ronny Zimmermann. Not to be underestimated is the bad role model effect that paid football also provides. Professionals who are theatrically rolling on the floor and constantly protesting to the referee are just as damaging to acceptance as lamenting coaches who complain about every little thing. And afterwards they are happy to explain their constant misconduct with their emotions.
Therefore, many amateur referees found it beneficial when top referee Deniz Aytekin reprimanded the “yellow king” Bo Svensson after the DFB Cup round of 16 FSV Mainz 05 – FC Bayern (0: 4) that one was “not the garbage can of the nation”. Aytekin is at the forefront of the DFB campaign to improve the image of the referees, under his supervision the Bundesliga pros Nils Petersen (SC Freiburg) and Anton Stach (FSV Mainz 05) officiated an amateur encounter.
Referee Deniz Aytekin (right) explains their task to pros Anton Stach and Nils Petersen
In the fair play league, the young players decide for themselves
What else can be done to initiate sustainable rethinking? There are some interesting approaches to this. One of them was invented by Ralf Klohr from SG Mußbach near Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in a so-called fair play league, where children make their own decisions without the intervention of referees, coaches or parents. In the ten to twelve-year-old D-Juniors, the players themselves have to agree on a throw-in, kick-off or corner so that the often young referees are relieved.
The idea is that an awareness of contentious scenes and a quick willingness to compromise develop. This can, but does not have to, work. Trainers and parents can of course train the children to take the right of the strongest. Klohr believes in his project, which was launched in 2012 and won the Egidius Braun Prize, to get to the root of the problem.
Some districts in Hesse are currently conducting tests with it, because the new DFB Vice President Silke Sinning from the Hessian Football Association (HFV) is behind it. At a meeting next Monday (May 22nd, 2023), the sports scientist from Hesse also wants to convince President Bernd Neuendorf to promote mutual understanding at a nationwide level by expanding the fair play leagues, if children and young people develop a kind of understanding of democracy early on in their games learn.