Better service for visitors
©IMAGO
The injury time will soon be visible on the video screens in the Bundesliga stadiums until the final whistle. The German Football League is planning to change the game rules to allow this. This is reported by the “Funke Mediengruppe”. The transparency of referee decisions and the service for stadium visitors should be improved.
According to the report, the display of the playing time should be stopped at 45:00 minutes or 90:00 minutes. The additional time is then shown separately. “Subject to the approval of the DFL general meeting in December, the change will come into force on January 1, 2026,” the “Funke Mediengruppe” quoted a DFL spokesman as saying.
Stadium ban: DFB announces new control body
Stadium bans should continue to be imposed by local commissions. In addition, the German Football Association (DFB) has announced an additional central authority for control. “The new body serves as a higher-level technical supervisory authority to ensure a uniform, consistent, effective, efficient and fair stadium ban procedure,” said the DFB. There have been repeated discussions and protests from football fans on this topic recently.
At a top-level discussion on the topic of “violence in football stadiums”, the sports ministers of the federal states decided around a year ago to introduce a nationwide central stadium ban commission in German professional football. As a result, representatives from politics, the police, the DFB, the German Football League (DFL) and the Fan Project Coordination Office discussed the topic of stadium security in a working group in recent months and continue to do so.
According to the DFB, there were calls for, for example, the reduction or elimination of ticket quotas for away fans or the obligation to personalize tickets. It was also discussed that the authorities no longer approve the clubs’ security concepts. Games could then not take place.
“From a football perspective, such unilateral interventions by the authorities should be avoided at all costs because they do not target the perpetrators and are unsuitable for achieving their goals,” writes the DFB. The association describes the stadium experience in Germany as “safe”. He relies on statistics from the police’s Central Information Center for Sports Operations (ZIS) as well as surveys.
“The aim of the DFB and the DFL in all discussions was and is to agree on suitable and effective measures in the interests of football that can further improve security around football games and at the same time reduce police deployment hours,” says the DFB. “At the same time, it was important to counter unsuitable, unnecessary and/or inappropriate demands with information and objective arguments. Different points of view became very clear in the discussions.” Among other things, the DFB wants to improve prevention. The number of fan representatives is to be increased and the clubs’ security officers and event managers are to be strengthened.