The northern duel between HSV and Hannover 96 was about to be canceled due to fan protests. The trigger: protest posters of the worst kind.
Protests are right and important – even in football. Ultra groups and fans have been protesting against investor involvement in the DFL for weeks. They throw tennis balls, chocolate coins – a colorful potpourri of legitimate means. But what happened on Friday evening in Hamburg during the game between HSV and Hannover 96 is repulsive, disgusting, inhumane.
Hannover 96 fans showed their own club boss Martin Kind on a poster in a crosshairs. Bad memories of similar posters against Hoffenheim’s patron Dietmar Hopp were brought back. Hopp was the target of the worst protests in 2020, and the game between his Hoffenheim team and FC Bayern in February 2020 was even about to be canceled because of this.
A scenario that now also loomed in Hamburg four years later. Only when the bad posters were packed away did referee Sören Storks whistle to restart the game and allow the 36 minutes to end after the break. Should Storks have had to abandon the game because of the posters? It would have been a perfectly legitimate means.
That simply does not work
Showing a person in the crosshairs, effectively setting them free to be shot down – seeing this as a means of protest is unacceptable. Especially in this day and age, when there is more than just one hot spot in the whole world, where people shoot and kill each other, where radicalization can be seen in society. That’s simply not possible – and that needs to be said, written and communicated so clearly.
Nobody needs such a protest – and it should be prosecuted. It must also be said clearly: Once again it is probably only a small group of supporters who choose such a type of protest. Nevertheless: The stadium is not a legal vacuum – and posters with people in the crosshairs should not be allowed to be shown anywhere.