A man runs onto the pitch during a junior soccer game, wants to attack the referee, and other spectators jump to the referee’s side. A wild scuffle ensues, in the end the two supporters are injured, the attacker is led away in handcuffs, and the tournament is canceled. And the still young referee takes the trauma of the assault with him into his further career.
Last weekend, just such an incident occurred at the Heimstetten sports park: In the course of an U-12 junior football tournament, the 49-year-old father of one of the local players burned the fuses after a controversial penalty decision by the referee: He started, the 17-year-old Nudging impartialists before two other onlookers rushed to help. But the attacker did not give up, bit one in the forearm, the other avoided a blow, fell to the ground and injured his head.
The informed police put an end to the spook, the 49-year-old was taken into custody, the tournament could not be continued, if only because the young referee, son of Heimstettner club president Magnus Harlander, was completely nervous. “I’ve never experienced anything like this before,” says Michael Matejka, the football department manager at SV Heimstetten. He used to observe the behavior of parents at youth games incognito for the Bavarian Football Association on various football fields in the region. “Nothing serious ever happened there,” says Matejka. Even if it gets a little louder at times, most of the rabble is within the tolerable range. This limit was clearly exceeded last Saturday.
According to Matejka, the 49-year-old continued to riot in the police car and charges were made against him for insults and bodily harm, among other things. The violent father gets a permanent house ban from the club. “Experience shows that in such cases the player who is not responsible for anything, signs off anyway,” says Heimstetten’s division manager Matejka.
But why are there always massive verbal or even violent arguments with parents involved in youth games? On the one hand, people apparently see the football field as a lawless area, and many give in to their protective instincts and step into the breach for their supposedly disadvantaged children. Some, however, already see the new Messi in the son and believe that they can push the possibly lucrative professional career of Filius in this inappropriate way. Despite everything, Matejka does not believe that protective measures should be taken against aggressive parents. “If I have to put up fences in youth football, I can leave it the same,” he says.
Protect referees = lock out parents?
This is exactly what was done before the pandemic-related restrictions on the TSV Haar facility. There, parents were generally not allowed to go on the fenced playing fields on which the offspring games take place. This protects the referees, it said from the TSV. On the other hand, parents should find it even more frustrating to have to stand behind a fence.
Even at the so far top-class club in the Munich district, SpVgg Unterhaching, escalating parents are the exception. President Manfred Schwabl remembers an incident in winter 2019/20, before Corona also paralyzed youth football. At that time the Unterhachinger U14 was at a tournament in Salzburg. “A father of one of our boys insulted the opposing players and the referee.”
The club boss overheard this by chance, his reaction was clear: “I took the player out of play for eight weeks, you can imagine how peaceful Christmas was at home,” says Schwabl, who received this draconian punishment then also launched in the Whatsapp groups of all years of the youth training center in order to deter imitators.
“In Haching, we place great value on respect, and those who don’t stick to it have to feel the consequences,” emphasizes Schwabl. In this case it was the boy who had to pay for his father’s indiscipline.