Bundesliga scandals
FC Bayern and the flying bread knife
By Ben Redelings
03/21/2022, 7:14 p.m
After the game was stopped because a beer mug was thrown at the assistant referee Christian Gittelmann in Bochum’s Ruhr Stadium, football Germany is appalled. Rightly so. But in the history of the Bundesliga scandal, far more bizarre things have actually been thrown.
“Unfortunately, we have found that there are spectators that we do not like to see. We will follow those beer bottle and firecracker throwers. Any spectator who hands over a lout who is damaging the club’s reputation to the security staff will receive one from us Bonus of 50 marks. We will take action against the troublemakers for trespassing, if necessary even for bodily harm.” As these words of the then Dortmund chairman Dr. Werner Wilms from 1964 show, the problem of unwanted pitchers in the Bundesliga stadiums has been known and feared from the very beginning. A nuisance, then, with a long history and some curious tales!
Exactly 51 years ago, the tabloid with the colorful pictures emblazoned the headline: “Now knives are already flying in the Bundesliga!”. And indeed, exactly this scandal broke out in the match between Rot-Weiss Essen and FC Bayern Munich in the spring of 1971. A knife flew into the penalty area from the notorious west curve in Essen and just missed Sepp Maier. Horrified, the Bayern goalkeeper presented the around 20 centimeters long bread knife to referee Jan Redelfs, who sent it to the DFB in Frankfurt immediately after the end of the game. But although the “Bild” newspaper spoke afterwards of a “flashing murder instrument”, the referee reacted relatively calmly: “In the first half a beer bottle was thrown into the Munich penalty area. Shortly afterwards a knife, which didn’t hit anyone. The knife I made sure.”
Already during the break, the stadium announcer proudly announced that the thrower of the dangerous projectile had been caught with the help of the spectators. It was a 17-year-old boy who was under the influence of alcohol and was “trembling like a leaf” all over. In a first statement, he said nervously that he always carried the knife with him, that he had dropped it, that someone else had picked it up and thrown it onto the field. With tears in his eyes, he begged the police not to tell the parents. His father would kill him if he found out, he stammered. But nobody could spare him this journey.
Days after the game, the high school student apologized to Bayern and avoided a procedure. And after the Munich team had already blamed Rot-Weiss Essen (“They can’t do anything about the derailment”), the DFB also ended the investigation without having imposed a penalty on RWE.
“But must get a reminder”
That had been completely different in another act – a few years earlier in the opening season of the Bundesliga. At that time, however, the object did not miss those involved on the lawn, but hit the referee directly on the head. On the 22nd match day of the 1963/64 season in the game between 1. FC Köln and Eintracht Frankfurt, a young FC supporter hit referee Lutz on the skull with a flagpole. An act of madness! And yet the referee reacted in a very considerate and forgiving manner. Lutz didn’t even want to report the young violent criminal, who could be taken directly into police custody. With a large plaster on his swollen forehead, however, he demanded: “But the careless youth must be given a lesson. He should be sentenced to transfer a sum of money to an orphanage.”
As much forbearance as referee Lutz showed, the DFB reacted so relentlessly. The association imposed a ban on 1. FC Köln. Coach Georg Knöpfle’s team had to switch to the Stadion am Zoo in Wuppertal and almost secured the championship there on matchday 25 after beating Braunschweig.
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary anecdote treasure chest. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Mondays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) can be found on his page www.scudetto.de.
Direct attacks on line judges were obviously not uncommon in the past, when there was usually only one camera – if at all – in the stadium, as Hermann Gerland once said: “When I played in Kaiserslautern, bats were flying through the stadium there. And then it was there a linesman. One of the Lauterers was three meters offside, so he dared to raise the flag. But only once. The second time, one stood six meters offside. Grandpa with the crutch did it, he did it the first time didn’t agree, said behind him: ‘Raise the flag again, boy, I’ll knock the flag down with the crutch!’ And he didn’t just say that!”
“Like Carnival in Rio”
In the 1980s, the Bundesliga then had to contend with a completely different problem: fireworks. Those present were not always able to take the matter with humor, as in this case referee Wolf-Dieter Ahlenfelder in the 1984/85 season. When flares flew onto the pitch from both blocks during Cologne’s 4-1 win over FC Schalke 04, “Ahli” stood smiling on the sidelines and cheerfully pointed to the fireworks: “Like carnival in Rio!” Abandoning the game did not occur to him at the time: “Only if a player had been hit.”
However, that is exactly what happened in the 1987/88 season. When complete idiots once again shot fireworks rockets onto the green lawn and a rocket hit Frank Mill from Dortmund during BVB’s 4-1 victory over Schalke 04 on entering. With second-degree burns on his thighs, he played anyway. “It burned like pitch and brimstone,” reported the striker afterwards – and even scored the last goal of the day.
The absolute nonsense act by Bochum’s beer mug thrower last Friday against Borussia Mönchengladbach now joins this series of curious Bundesliga scandals. But as the opening quote from the Dortmund chairman at the time, Dr. Werner Wilms shows from the beginnings of the league, it must be expected that these actions by individual perpetrators can never be completely banned from the stadiums. Unfortunately, we will probably have to live with these crazy actions of some confused people in the future.