When the last Schalke season game at SC Freiburg kicks off on Saturday at 3:30 p.m., many supporters of the Royal Blues will not watch it on TV. Some because they have something better to do after the disastrous performances of the second worst second-team. The others, because according to the recent headlines about their chairman of the supervisory board, the meat wholesaler Clemens Tönnies, they have problems to live out their identification with the association.
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Katharina Strohmeyer is one of those people to whom both apply. But because she has been a member of the club for 22 years and believes that “resignation does not help”, she and her partner Stefan Barta, a member since 1991, have a demonstration under the ambiguous motto “Schalke is not a slaughterhouse – against the dismantling of ours Association “registered.
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The rally begins at the kick-off in Freiburg and is planned as a human chain around the “Berger Feld” club site. Since one should not hold hands due to the corona, blue and white ribbon should connect the demonstrators. A “La Ola” is to be started at the beginning of the second half. “The event ends at 5:15 p.m. with the singing of the club song ‘Blue and white, how I love you'”, the call says.
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“We are ashamed of our club”
There is no question that Strohmeyer and Barta love the club, which is why it has shocked the development of recent years. “The number of disaster reports is now so high that we are really ashamed of our club,” says Strohmeyer, meaning not the sporting situation, but what is happening off the pitch this season:
“There is the racist statements by the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Tönnies, about Africans or the dismissal of low-wage earners as a saving measure. And now over 1,500 infected people in his meat factory.” No, she could no longer be proud of her club. But that’s not even the worst, says the 36-year-old, referring to the fans of Borussia Dortmund in the circle of friends: “They don’t even scoff or verbally attack us – they feel sorry for us. And they’re also right about what they do say. This is really the maximum sentence. “
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Much of Schalke’s undesirable developments in recent years is personally attributed to Strohmeyer Clemens Tönnies. Thanks to his abundance of power, he constantly interfered in the operative business as chairman of the supervisory board and was therefore also responsible for the financial and sporting decline of the club: “19 coaches and five sports directors in the Tönnies era, for whom we mostly had to or still have to pay severance payments,” says Strohmeyer . “The blue and white mountain of debt bears his signature.”
In fact, Schalke is dependent on the help of banks in the corona crisis, the almost 100 million euro construction project “Berger Feld” at the old park stadium is still to be carried out (read more about the club’s financial situation here). For sporting reasons, the club missed the European Cup for the second time in a row, the personnel costs are too high for that. After all: The Schalker Arena has been paid off for a year.
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Tönnies is no longer wearable for many fans
The straw overflow had, however, made the headlines of the past few days for Strohmeyer. The news about the working conditions in the slaughterhouses of Tönnies, which would have made the rapid spread of the corona virus possible in the Gütersloh and Warendorf districts. Even people who were not interested in football asked the question of how someone who should be held responsible for his failure by politics could still lead the fate of their club.
Strohmeyer, who lives only 40 kilometers from the meat factory, is embittered: “More than 1,500 infected people, of whom several may not survive the disease – and two entire counties in which people are now the mine for the corona outbreak had to pay in the slaughterhouse “- Tönnies accepted all of this with approval.
Strohmeyer now knows that Tönnies was only re-elected last year, with 70 percent of the vote, which was generally seen as a good result. And she knows that he still enjoys support in parts of the membership – even if there would probably be no majority for an outsourcing of the club favored by Tönnies. But Strohmeyer is convinced that the mood at Schalke has changed fundamentally since his re-election: “We get a lot of encouragement from fans who are really relieved that we have now registered for the demo. They want a fresh start with other people at the top of the club and say: Finally it starts, finally someone takes it in hand. “
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