It was announced at the end of the week that the national team match between Germany and Gibraltar will no longer take place at Bremen's Weser Stadium. The German Football...
It was announced at the end of the week that the national team match between Germany and Gibraltar will no longer take place at Bremen's Weser Stadium. The German Football...
It was announced at the end of the week that the national team match between Germany and Gibraltar will no longer take place at Bremen's Weser Stadium. The German Football Federation (DFB) and the German Football Association (DFL) reacted to the Bremen Senate's plans to involve the federation in the costs for police deployments during Bundesliga matches in Bremen. In an interview, Werder's chairman of management, Klaus Filbry, explains why he feels the rejection of the national team match is "logical", what financial consequences the decision will have on Werder Bremen and why he thinks the accusation of extortion by Bremen politicians makes no sense.
WERDER.DE: Klaus Filbry, as expected, the DFL has re-located the German national team friendly against Gibraltar planned for November. It will now be played in Nuremberg. How much does that hurt?
Klaus Filbry: "Even though we had previously received such signals from the DFB, it hurts us and all of the football fans in the region a lot. It is an emotional pain and a financial one. And all that because the state of Bremen believes it doesn't need to keep their agreements end of the deal and tear apart a unified community that had worked up until there. Honestly, I had never believed that Bremen politics would take this step. It's a huge loss of trust between the major federations and Bremen. The rejection of all further national team matches in Bremen is just logical."
WERDER.DE: What agreements do you mean?
Klaus Filbry: "In May 2012, the sports federations and the politicians met to talk intensively about the issue of major sporting events and police deployments. In a meeting of all the Interior ministers and representatives of the German Football Association (DFL), German Football Federation (DFB) and the German Olympic Sports Confederation, a collective 10-point plan was worked out in which crime prevention and an offender-based reconnaissance were the focus and excluded the issues of covering of police costs because everyone in the group agreed that this way wasn't expedient. Werder alone expected payments in seven figures to work according to the 10-point plan. And we are not talking about the taxes that Werder pay annually. I think that Werder is the Bundesliga club which implements this the best way. In May 2014, the sports representatives of the interior ministers conference were told clearly that the work is exemplary and that the sports officials kept their agreements to 100 percent. With this background, the severe reaction by the DFB, DFL and the DOSB is absolutely comprehensible for me."
WERDER.DE: In addition to the "emotional hurt", how much is the "financial" hit for Bremen and Werder?
Klaus Filbry: "The international match against Gibraltar was budgeted with 600,000 euros for Werder Bremen and Weserstadion GmbH. Those are earnings that we will not get. The Bremen tourism branch will also be very sad because they will lose monies. The worst thing is that the people in Bremen had looked forward to this big event. They were going to get to see the world champion team for whom they had been crossing their fingers all summer. Now they have to drive to Nuremberg for that."
WERDER.DE: The Bremen SPD fraction boss Björn Tschöpe attacked the sport and the DFB and talked about wanting to extort a "democratically legitimate government and a freely elected parliament with the withdrawal of sports events". What do you say to that?
Klaus Filbry: "I have to reject that decisively. There are, as discussed, clear agreements between the sport and the interior ministers conference. And now Bremen is the only of the 16 states to decide against sticking to the measures and hoping to give SV Werder additional services for more security as part of the 10-point plan. But to be talking of ‘extortion' is the crowning of this whole process."
WERDER.DE: What will happen when the initial emotions settle down?
Klaus Filbry: "Then we will pick up the dialogue behind the scenes. We will try to understand why Bremen in the form of Mr. Mäurer as interior senator and the SPD fraction did not stick to the collective agreement of the interior ministers conference. We will continue to try to convince people that the existing concept has been successful. We know that there in people in the senate who see it that way as well."
