Exactly twenty years ago, DFB President Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder was asked about the future of German and international football. His mind games are curious in retrospect. And also his promise “No to Sunday games!” the DFB President does not hold. An irritated look back.
“You can also think about changing the throw-in. FIFA is currently piloting a free-kick instead of a throw-in. That’s a good start.” It is hard to believe that these sentences are exactly twenty years old to the day. It was said by Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder on January 23, 2003. The mind games of the DFB President in office at the time are also remarkable because a proposal by the FIFA boss for global football development, Arsène Wenger, is currently circulating and once again – you have to probably say – it’s hotly debated: “There are currently two big time wasters: throw-ins and free-kicks. The goal is to make the game more spectacular and faster. Maybe kick-ins with a time limit of five seconds, for example, could help.”
It was one of the lucid moments in an interview that twenty years later can only be read with an irritated shake of the head. Because the then DFB boss was wrong in almost all points and forecasts.
In the case of the former national coach, Mayer-Vorfelder, who died in 2015, is most likely to look to the future: “Rudi Völler has a contract until 2006 and is doing a very good job.” After all, after leaving in 2004, “Tante Käthe” is currently back at the top of the DFB as the successor to Oliver Bierhoff. The fact that Mayer-Vorfelder wanted to abolish passive offside at the time because “that leads to too many wrong decisions” was certainly not a bad idea, especially because it was mentioned in the context of the crazy idea of former FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who at the time had seriously suggested enlarging the gates. An idea that was as unrealistic as it was almost insane in terms of its feasibility and therefore, thank God, was quickly dismissed.
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 current book (“60 Years Bundesliga. The Anniversary Album”) is available on his website www.scudetto.de.
The fact that Mayer-Vorfelder did not believe in the future of video evidence in January 2003 (“I am fundamentally against technical aids in football”) shows the great strength of the former Minister of Education and Finance of the state of Baden-Württemberg: his closeness to the people. Because he ruled out the video evidence at the time because he “didn’t want to complicate football”: “Mistakes are simply part of it, and the people at the regulars’ table should and want to discuss these mistakes.” A point of view that can still be shared twenty years later, even if by now it’s Bier the existence of the VAR and the many contentious decisions that result from his involvement are more often the subject of arguments in the pub and on TV shows.
There are still Sunday games
But the then DFB President was – consciously or unconsciously – completely wrong in a forecast. Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder rigorously ruled out the staging of the Bundesliga as a TV event and the further fragmentation of the matchdays because they would “promote the commercialization of football”. The DFB President could not imagine a return to relegation between the first and second divisions (“That doesn’t make football more attractive. These are commercial considerations”).
And although the Sunday games were completely rejected by the fans (in surveys, just one percent of the participants were enthusiastic about the Sunday date) and the DFB President promised to work for abolition (“No to Sunday!”), They are until still an integral part of everyday league life today. And the reintroduction of the Friday games, which was longingly desired by the supporters of the Bundesliga at the time and which the DFB President wanted to put at the top of his agenda (“I will address the Friday games as the first point”), was not reintroduced until the 2006/07 season aligned.
Twenty years later, Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder’s interview with a major German sports magazine reveals the DFB’s disconcerting distance from reality. In retrospect, it becomes clear how far removed the Frankfurt leadership was from the reality of football and its fans in the days of 2003. One can only hope that a lot has happened in this direction at the DFB since then.