“You have to pull yourself together”
Lothar Matthäus criticizes Steffen Baumgart for Central Finger
22.09.2025 – 8:12 p.m.Reading time: 1 min.
In the game against Eintracht Frankfurt, Union coach Steffen Baumgart noticed, among other things, with a middle finger gesture. Lothar Matthäus has no understanding for this.
Lothar Matthäus criticized Union coach Steffen Baumgart for his middle finger gesture in the game against Eintracht Frankfurt. In his column for the TV broadcaster Sky, the record national player wrote: “To show a middle finger, as Steffen Baumgart recently in Frankfurt, that doesn’t matter.” It is also irrelevant whether the middle finger had been shown in the “airless space” without a destination or had specifically directed against someone.
Baumgart had shown a middle finger after his team’s victory against Eintracht Frankfurt after the 4: 3 goal of the Frankfurter because he was annoyed by the previous penalty decision. The middle finger was unnoticed by the referees.
However, the coach flew off the square because he first saw the yellow-red card for excessive complaints and then for the stepping of a paper ball. Baumgart is now closed at least for the upcoming duel with his ex-club Hamburger SV. Due to the middle finger, however, he faces even harder consequences. The DFB control committee has started investigations.
“Every scene of the coach is discussed and if it was even a bit in the direction of the referee or a fan who insulted him, it doesn’t work,” Matthäus wrote about the campaign. “You have to put it away as a coach. I have been admonished two or three times as a coach, but that is part of the job and you have to pull yourself together.”