This is what happened at the German Football Association (DFB): that they long for Theo Zwanziger as president. After the eerily beautiful summer fairy tale of the 2006 World Cup, he wanted to establish the world’s largest sports association as a social player, took action against homophobia and racism and showed statesmanlike greatness after the suicide of national goalkeeper Robert Enke – but the twenties went to his head, so that he tangled up in their own vanities.
Then came the subsequent revelations that the supposedly clean award of the 2006 World Cup was just a fairy tale – since then, the DFB has only been concerned with itself, without really making any progress with the investigation. Even in the midst of the pandemic, the association forgets itself and its charitable purpose in the ongoing crisis: to promote football and thus social cohesion.
On the contrary: The DFB is falling apart, next now President Fritz Keller has to resign because he rarely has himself under control and the historical and social coordinates have slipped inexcusably for him with a Nazi comparison. In the internal mud battle with General Secretary Friedrich Curtius, who is also in love with his public role, Keller is not and must not be the only one who leaves. But who comes after? And above all: what?
According to Theo Zwanziger, Wolfgang Niersbach and Reinhard Grindel are following the next logical step with Fritz Keller. The DFB top has long since exhausted their substitution contingent. And finally must honestly ask who and what the association wants to represent.
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There are enough hot spots: In the pandemic, children and adolescents are sinking in front of screens instead of chasing after a ball and their health outside. With a commercial circus that relocates games to high-risk corona areas for money, professional football has beamed itself into a world that has nothing to do with the reality of the fans.
It takes a complete fresh start
Interest in the national team is rapidly declining, while national coach Joachim Löw, whose resignation is also overdue, is dragging himself into a European championship that is due to cross half the continent in June despite travel and contact restrictions. Football has lost all measure.
Seriously looking for one’s own center again, reflecting on solidarity values in sport, helping amateur clubs in need and thus being a role model again for a society in search of meaning – all of this should and must be done by a German Football Association.
This also requires a complete new beginning at the top of the Bundesliga – free of the board intrigues of Vice President Rainer Koch (who apparently also wants to sit out this crisis) and the pandemic arrogance of Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (who does not know how to properly wear a mask, but wanted to cheat the professionals forward in the vaccination sequence).
Sport as a mirror of society
Organized football has to take a step back before it can play a role in social life again. Only if he changes more than his leading faces will people switch him back to their everyday lives after the pandemic.
The ghostly empty Bundesliga stadiums are a double warning: That top-class sport is allowed to do so much more than culture, for example, in the pandemic. And that football is not a nice game without the people who see a piece of life in it and invest a lot of their lives in it.
Sport is a mirror of society. A society that has to practice humility in difficult times, showing solidarity and compassion. When the football organized in the DFB looks in the mirror today, it only sees itself and a lot of borrowed money. But society has more to bestow: trust, hope.
The next president of the DFB or the next president has to earn trust anew. In the fact that football sees itself as part of a world in upheaval and creates values for society. It doesn’t look like it in the DFB yet.
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