Search: ' DFB'

Thanks to share rules, German fans retain a say in the running of their clubs. But Paul Joyce worries this may be about to change

German football is justifiably proud of its strict regulations on club ownership. In order to prevent predatory investors seizing control of teams, the statutes of the German Football League (DFL) decree that at least 50 per cent of a professional club’s shares plus one controlling vote must be owned by its members, ie the supporters. This democratic model also means that fans of teams such as Schalke 04 and 1.FC Cologne have recently been able to use their clubs’ AGMs to block unpopular measures proposed by their boards.

Read more…

The Tragedy of Robert Enke
by Ronald Reng
Yellow Jersey Press, £16.99
Reviewed by Mike Ticher
From WSC 297 November 2011

Buy this book

Considering young men are a group at high risk of suicide, the number of active footballers who have taken their own lives is surprisingly small. Dave Clement, Alan Davies and Justin Fashanu are perhaps the best known in Britain, all in their declining football years. That makes Robert Enke a rarity among rarities: the Hannover 96 goalkeeper was at his peak, in a season that should have led to the World Cup, when he walked in front of a train in November 2009.

Read more…

The 1974 World Cup fixture between East and West Germany was a unique encounter during the Cold War era – but meetings were more frequent than the official history suggests. Paul Joyce looks back to the little-known Olympic qualifying competitions and reveals the political manoeuvring behind the remarkable Geisterspiele (ghost matches) of 1959

Most history books refer to East Germany’s 1-0 victory over West Germany at the 1974 World Cup as the only game between the two countries. Strictly speaking, however, it was already their sixth encounter. Before this, the Federal Republic and the GDR contested a series of pre-Olympic qualifiers with a Cold War intensity that made disputes about the composition of the 2012 British Olympic football team look like a vicarage tea-party.

Read more…

Paul Joyce reports on Germany's reaction to the Game 39 proposals

Support for Richard Scudamore’s 39th step has been non-existent in the German media. “Why do they still bother playing in England at all?” asked the left-wing newspaper Taz. “They may as well sell the whole circus to south-east Asia and put up giant screens in English stadiums.” The Berlin-based daily Der Tagesspiegel saw the Premier League’s expansionism as part of a post-Empire identity crisis: “While many Englishmen view this internationalisation as a stigma, they profit from it financially and it forms the basis of their sporting success. And the English are proud of this success.”

Read more…

A German player refuses to play against Israel – because he was born in Iran. But Ashkan Dejagah, who has dual nationality, has picked up sympathy in some unexpected places, as Paul Joyce explains

Tattooed on the neck of VfL Wolfsburg midfielder Ashkan Dejagah is the motto “Never forget where you’re from”. On his right forearm is the word “Teheran”, the German spelling of the city where he was born in 1986; on his left “Berlin”, where he grew up and played for Hertha. Not that anyone will forget where he comes from after he withdrew from a Germany Under-21 game against Israel in Tel Aviv in October. “There are political reasons for this,” he told the paper Bild. “Everyone knows I’m a German-Iranian.”

Read more…