Cologne receives draconian penalty for pyrotechnics
A wall of red smoke and a delay in the game are now costing 1. FC Köln dearly. In the derby against Borussia Mönchengladbach, the fans of the Bundesliga club put on a pyro show that not everyone liked. The DFB gets tough, the club defends itself.
Bundesliga soccer club 1. FC Köln is to pay a record fine of 595,000 euros due to the large-scale burning of pyrotechnics by its fans during the derby against Borussia Mönchengladbach (3:1). The FC has received a corresponding penalty request from the Control Committee of the German Football Association (DFB), as the 16th-placed team in the table announced. However, the first Bundesliga champions intend to "apply to the DFB Control Committee to significantly reduce the fine".
The club considers "the DFB's approach of assessing the incidents without reflection and partially applying a standardized penalty guideline to be wrong", the Cologne club explained. "From our point of view, this approach is absolutely misguided," FC managing director Christian Keller was quoted as saying in a club statement: "The awarding of association penalties in this form is far removed from the reality of German soccer and fan culture. We will therefore continue to actively and emphatically campaign for a sensible adjustment of the sentencing guidelines and for an appropriate approach to this very culture."
On October 22, before and during the derby against arch-rivals Mönchengladbach, Cologne fans set off numerous pyrotechnic objects in the south stand area. The massive amount of smoke caused the kick-off to be delayed by more than six minutes.
Faeser wants tougher sanctions for pyrotechnics
"The derby was intensively prepared by our security and fan officers as well as the security authorities," explained Keller: "This case also shows once again that a general ban on pyrotechnics in soccer does not have sufficient effect. For the active fan scene, the use of pyrotechnics is part of soccer and fan culture."
However, according to Keller, "no red lines should be crossed". Specifically, the safety of spectators in particular must always be guaranteed and there must be no impact on the sporting action. "These limits were clearly exceeded against Gladbach. This also resulted in enormous financial damage. The high fine hits FC very hard on the way to the fastest possible economic recovery," said the FC managing director.
Just last week, pyrotechnics were also a topic at the Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK). Under the item "Possible amendment of the law on explosives to tighten restrictions and sanctions on the carrying of pyrotechnics" was discussed - and for Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser, the urgency is apparently beyond question. Up to now, it has been legal to carry pyrotechnics - for example on New Year's Eve. At the beginning of the year, Faeser rejected a general and nationwide ban on firecrackers.
According to fan researcher Harald Lange from the University of Würzburg, a ban in soccer would not help anyway: "The harsher the penalties, the more rigorous the sanctions against pyrotechnics, the more interesting it becomes for fans to set off pyrotechnics and thus show that 'the stadium, the game, that's ours'," he told NDR.
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- Despite Nancy Faeser's calls for tougher sanctions against pyrotechnics following incidents like the one at 1.FC Cologne's derby against Borussia Mönchengladbach, the club maintains that the current penalty guidelines are misguided and do not reflect German soccer and fan culture.
- Amidst the backlash from the DFB's record fine for pyrotechnics use during the derby, Nancy Faeser might find an ally in fan researcher Harald Lange from the University of Würzburg, who suggests that harsher sanctions might even encourage fans to use pyrotechnics more often.
Source: www.ntv.de
