Documentary sheds new light on escalation: Did Hopp and FC Bayern staged the scandal?


Documentary sheds new light on escalation
Did Hopp and FC Bayern stage the scandal?

The Bundesliga game between TSG Hoffenheim and FC Bayern was about to be canceled at the end of February 2020. Apparently everyone involved was surprised by the violence of the fan protests. A documentation now sheds light on the events from a completely different perspective.

According to a documentary on ZDF, the scandal surrounding posters against TSG Hoffenheim majority shareholder Dietmar Hopp on February 29, 2020 in Sinsheim appears in a new light. Reporter Jochen Breyer, who had created the documentary together with Jürn Kruse, reported in the “taz” interview that the popular reactions from the clubs at the Bundesliga match between Hoffenheim and Bayern Munich (0: 6) had apparently been staged.

“What surprised me the most: That before the game in Sinsheim almost everyone knew what was going to happen, TSG Hoffenheim, FC Bayern and the DFB,” said Breyer. In the 45-minute contribution, he tried to present a multi-layered presentation of what happened at that time. It shouldn’t be forgotten that at the beginning of the whole thing there was still the abuse of the fans, but Breyer sketched: “The fact that the responses of those responsible were apparently planned and that it was overdone at one point or another changed my point of view to this day and this conflict. “

The players from Hoffenheim and Munich had been sent into the dressing room by referee Christian Dingert because of offensive posters against Hopp, the game continued – but with ball attachments from the players of both teams. Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Hopp went to the pitch in the pouring rain after the final whistle and demonstratively applauded the Hoffenheim fans who had turned against the abuse. “That was the ugly face of Bayern Munich. There is no excuse for that,” emphasized Rummenigge at the time. DFB President Fritz Keller added in the evening in the ZDF’s “Current Sports Studio”: “We have hit rock bottom.”

Hopp doesn’t speak

However: The Bayern fan group Schickeria had inaugurated Bayern honorary president Uli Hoeneß about the plans in the Hoffenheim game two days before the game in Sinsheim. They were intended as a reaction to a collective punishment against the league competitor Borussia Dortmund, who had to compete against Hopp in Hoffenheim for two years without his own fans because of repeated abuse. “I told them that I couldn’t accept that at all,” said Hoeneß in the documentary in the second. Hopp, Hoffenheim and the German Football Association (DFB) were also informed in advance, reported the ZDF.

Hoeneß emphasized again in the documentary that one should not confuse perpetrator and victim: “There is only one victim and only one group that is guilty.” Hopp did not want to comment on the incidents at that time in the documentary, and it was not allowed to shoot in the stadium. The club had therefore had directional microphones installed there in order to display alleged chants.

Reporter Breyer was self-critical on Twitter about a Hopp interview in the “Current Sports Studio” on ZDF five weeks after the Bayern game in 2020. This was rightly criticized by some fan scenes.

“I took the criticism to heart at the time and met with representatives of the ultra scene after the show to hear their version of the conflict,” emphasized Breyer. The documentary is an attempt “to catch up on what we missed back then: to portray this complex, multi-layered, emotionally charged conflict in a balanced way,” wrote Breyer.

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