The sports journalist and football commentator on the continuation of the Bundesliga season, the signal for society and the future of German popular sports.
Marcel Reif, 70, was for decades strong in opinion and remarkably fluent – and therefore also the most controversial – German football commentator. He works for a Swiss pay-TV broadcaster and is a invited guest on numerous talk shows on German television. A conversation about the continuation of the Bundesliga season with ghost games and the future of German popular sports.
Games without a spectator – a football fan’s heart is bleeding. . .
Marcel Reif: Nobody wants that. But there is no alternative. There is no point in discussing things that cannot be changed. As with everything in this Corona period: it’s all a question of balancing. Nobody currently has the absolute truth. In this case, however, there are definitely more arguments in favor of continuing.
The alternative would be to do without it.
Ripe: Then, however, you can largely forget the professional football in Germany as we knew it. This is a reliable calculation that the DFL has drawn up: 13 out of 36 first and second division teams would not survive. If you want to do that, please! There is also this other discussion: The football has to reform and thus normalize. Yes – only if you do it according to the motto, operation successful, patient dead: Then I can find no sense in it.
Critics say: Extra sausages for millions – what social signal does it send out?
Ripe: A lot of things are mixed up. It is dishonest. The matter is too important for that. The professional football is an industry and it makes no secret of it. And he has created the conditions to be able to continue. From the medical and scientific side, labor lawyers, the insurers who protect the footballers, the health officials – they all had to agree. And a concept has been developed that makes the risks of the continuation seem manageable. Nobody currently has absolute wisdom at Corona. I therefore accept everyone who says that seems too risky to me. However, I do not see any special treatment for the professional football players. Everything that resonates in there, the millionarios who drive around the area in sports cars. . .
. . . and eat gold steaks. . .
Ripe: . . . that’s all correct and also makes you sick if you want to hear from me like that. But that has nothing to do with the decision to continue. It’s too cheap to mess it up. I can not do anything with that.
“The Ultras are an important, but a significantly smaller proportion of the people who are in the stadium.”
Marcel Reif, football commentator–
So “bread and games”. But if the Ultras, that is, the fans who always run to every game to support their club, say they don’t want ghost games: Doesn’t the Volkssport football finally move away from its roots?
Ripe: They now assume that the Ultras have a meaning that they do not have. The Ultras are an important, but a significantly smaller proportion of the people who are in the stadium. There are surveys that say that 70 to 75 percent of all Germans want to see football, i.e. the other fans. It cannot be that the Ultras claim reign of interpretation on their own. It cannot be that a minority, a clear minority, dictates how the rest of the world should see things. If the Ultras don’t want that, then they can stay away and don’t have to look.
Football as a placebo for the people. . .
Ripe: The Germans are not a people of idiots. They have shown how fascinatingly disciplined they have been in mastering this corona crisis. I tell you: I have to reward people now. People who have been sitting at home for weeks, I have to give them something for mind and soul at some point. Not just bread. Not just fear for the job and family members. Everyone needs distraction because otherwise they will become mentally ill, and these complications have been discussed far too little. For two or three hours to deal with something else again, the terribly controversial video evidence or the interpretation of the rules of the hand and all the wonderfully insignificant stuff, and only then to deal with the seriousness of the situation – that is what I consider the requirement the hour. Anything that is scientifically, medically and ethically responsible and can be viewed as a manageable risk must be eased. If not, this society also becomes mentally ill. I’m not saying that she’ll get better on football. For God’s sake! But football as a distraction for a few hours, I think that is quite socially relevant.
Photo: Premiere_World
–
Also at the risk that people with a Sky subscription will soon be celebrating football corona parties with friends and that hundreds will meet in front of the stadium during the games?
Ripe: Yes, because there are also rules in a free country. And those who do not abide by it make themselves punishable. Neither can you say that I am now happily driving over a red light because I just feel like it is a violation of the law. I’m not saying that it’s all risk-free and 100 percent okay. But everything you could do in advance was done. And I don’t say that alone, but experts. If someone deliberately wants to destroy this admittedly sensitive and complicated construct, so if we allow any wreckers to take command, Corona would be worse than I previously thought. But the positive Corona numbers did not fall from the sky and were not ordered by politicians, they are because the vast majority of people behaved according to the rules and recommendations.
What would be so bad if this hyper-commercialized professional football bubble would shrink a little bit healthier when there was suddenly less money in circulation?
Ripe: Nothing at all. But the money is there! Nobody stole that. That’s the tricky thing about the whole story: You can’t even really moralize! In Munich, people have done great business for decades and have created a cushion for their participation in the Champions League umpteen times. The Kataris in Paris, the Emirates in Manchester, American billionaires in Liverpool, Fiat in Turin – they have the money. Only: The professional football itself has become obscene. Total sums, consultant fees, player allowances. That has gone mad. The big ones will survive. My thesis is, and I will experience that: The big clubs will play in their own superleague in the foreseeable future, decoupled from the national leagues.
Photo: VALERY HACHE
–
An abomination for football romantics. . .
Ripe: Sure, but the big ones will continue to turn the wheel like before Corona. I prophesy that Real Madrid, if it really wants the young Mbapp from Paris, will also pay a 200 million euro fee. Despite Corona. That is, if you like, so strange in the whole story – only with that you have to put up with it. What you call a bubble will continue to work in the upper sector. But has nothing to do with the football of the Ultras or with the pure teaching. This is entertainment industry on another planet. A lot will change below that.
And when will the ever increasing scissors finally break apart?
Ripe: With my 70 years now I will still experience that a super league of the big ones split off without ultras. . .
. . . for the VIPs in the boxes and those who sit in front of the TV at home and have a subscription. . .
Ripe: . . . and for those who go to the stadium to “only” want to watch football. Like theater, opera, show – the best in the world. Because: An Mbapp or a Neymar, no matter what they deserve or whether they eat golden steaks – they play the best football in the world. And will earn accordingly – like show stars because they are such.
“In the long run, it makes no sense to let FC Bayern and Paderborn compete against each other in a league.”
Marcel Reif, football romantic–
And can you, as a football enthusiast like yourself, take note of this emotionlessly when the great popular sport is so betrayed and sold?
Ripe: He won’t, not at all. Some of them play entertainment football up there. And the others, from Wrzburg to Ingolstadt to Mnchengladbach and Frankfurt, play the football as we have known it so far. And then the fans have their club again. In the long run, it makes no sense to let FC Bayern and Paderborn compete against each other in a league.
It has already started that national leagues are getting boring. . .
Ripe: I can tell you who will be champions in Germany, who in France, in Spain we have two candidates, in England at the moment only one. And in Italy, Juventus becomes champion if it wants to. It has nothing to do with competition. So: In the past few years, some clubs have stood out from the rest of the country – through Champions League funds or other income – and today they play in their leagues in a kind of show run. The others are full of the booth and sing: “Take the lederhosen off the Bavarians”. But that is becoming less and less successful. Because money scores goals. And the others the players don’t have to score the goals to take off the lederhosen for Bayern. Sure, of course you win a game – but usually we know how it ends.
Photo: Getty Images
–
That is why the DFB Cup is so nice, because there are always surprises to this day. . .
Ripe: Sure, of course! And anyone who tries to change something is a bad finger for me, football romantics. There was an idea that the top clubs should only start in the second or third round. . . No! That patches up the soccer ball a bit: If the national sizes have to go somewhere in the first round, where there is still a bit of mold in the corner of the cabin, I say berromantic. We should keep that. But the rest of the caravan will move on.
And you are also looking forward to finally seeing football again and being allowed to comment in a stadium!
Ripe: As a football fan, I can tell you that I’m in a worse mood on Saturday afternoons from 3 p.m. Ask my wife! And she says: I know what’s going on with you: you’ve been chasing this nonsense for 65 years. And still haven’t had enough of it. What would I like to have standard weaknesses again. 911 discussions and and and. Finally something different than starting in the morning with the press conference of the Robert Koch Institute, watching the midday magazine (85 percent Corona), in the evening the news programs (95 percent Corona), then two talk shows about Corona (100 percent Corona) and falling asleep as a horror film the Donald Trump press conference (110 percent Corona). You can’t live like this! That’s how we get crazy. A Saturday afternoon with football is a hundred times better than one without. I am willing to continue to follow all the rules and only leave the house when I have to.
–
