In front of the cozy but cramped clubhouse of FC Phönix there are three football pitches: two grass pitches and a clay pitch in between as an all-weather training area – one of the last five in Munich. Because of the risk of injury on these hard courts, the city wanted to replace them with artificial turf pitches. In Berg am Laim, however, this project has reached a dead end. The situation is muddled.
The FC Phönix has been a tenant of the city since 1996 on Langkofelstraße next to the Michaeli-Gymnasium. The 103-year-old club has put a lot of work into this home for its table football and the small gymnastics department. The chairman Christian Tholl, youth coach Michael Sperk and Hanno Schombacher, the project officer for the artificial turf field, proudly tell this.
FC Phönix has had its home on the Sassolungo Road since 1996.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Falling in this place can end up being pretty painful.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Schombacher has created a table with all stations of the artificial turf odyssey. As early as 2016, Verena Dietl, today the third mayor and at that time the SPD sports officer in the town hall, promised support. But because the Greek school was supposed to move in as a new neighbor at the time, the club should wait – the sports department said it might be possible to cooperate with the school on the sports field.
But the school construction stalled, nothing more than a shell was built – and that was finally demolished. In 2020, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) promised artificial turf again, “with the city bearing the full cost”. But then Corona came. Only a year later, Reiter withdrew his promise that the budget situation no longer allowed financing.
In the spring of 2022, there was another turnaround: Mayor Dietl announced that a special pot would be created for the last five cinder places in the city, including 100 percent financing. Including new floodlight masts for FC Phönix, 1.7 million euros were to be invested.
But the jubilation was short-lived. The head of the sports department, Jürgen Sonneck, said the club had to apply for a subsidy from the Bavarian state sports association BLSV for legal reasons. Since this in turn requires a ten percent personal contribution, FC Phönix postponed the renovation of the clubhouse, collected special payments from the members and collected donations, including from the Sisters of Mercy in the district. In the summer of 2022, the association finally commissioned a planner and submitted the building application, which was quickly approved by the city.
But then the bad news: The BLSV could not pay out the subsidy during construction, the club had to finance its share – twelve percent of the total costs. But that can hardly be done for FC Phönix. The ground on which the club kicks doesn’t belong to them, so which bank would give you a loan? For the volunteers, vouching with their private assets is out of the question.
And the city? The sports department speaks of legal concerns, even citing Article 3 of the Basic Law against Schombacher, the requirement for equal treatment: Anyone can come.
This is how Schombacher sums up the misery in his own words – and his restrained resentment of the sports department. Shouldn’t the experts there have known what to expect from the club? So the voluntary commitment came to nothing, the frustration runs deep.
According to BLSV spokeswoman Katharina Schwarz, there are also municipalities elsewhere that vouch for the interim financing of such projects – but the spokesman for the Munich Sports Office, Thomas Groß, said that this was not legally possible. Incidentally, the city has already accommodated the club as far as possible.
Then Groß sends another e-mail afterwards. It says: “At the request of Mayor Dieter Reiter, the RBS (Department for Education and Sport) will try again to get together with everyone involved to find a reasonable solution.”