On Wednesday, the sports committee of the Munich City Council initiated the renovation of the stadium on Grünwalder Strasse – 18,105 spectators, complete roofing, 77 million euros, construction to start in 2026, suitability for the second division. Wednesday was “a good day for Munich football,” said the third mayor responsible for sport, Verena Dietl (SPD), and her party colleague Kathrin Abele added: “We don’t expect accusations to come again.”
On Thursday, one day after the supposedly good day, allegations came – from the most important tenant, the third division football club TSV 1860 Munich. “First and foremost, direct communication with the city of Munich is still very important to us,” said the lions. But they found that the public should also know a few things from discussions this week in the town hall: The German Football League (DFL) and Sportcast GmbH, which is responsible for the television images, do not believe that league operations in the Grünwalder stadium in the first Bundesliga are realistic . “Therefore, we have written to the city of Munich and made known our unavoidable position,” said the lions, “that we cannot make a long-term commitment if this cannot be reconciled with the licensing conditions”.
Professional footballers want to do their best
In other words: TSV 1860 only wants to enter into a long-term lease if it includes options for the unlikely, but not entirely impossible, event of a first division promotion in the next few decades. The draft resolution contained a clear commitment by the clubs involved to stay in the long term as a condition. FC Bayern Munich II probably doesn’t have a major problem with that – they can’t even get promoted to the second division as a youth team. It’s different with TSV 1860, even if you haven’t noticed anything about it in recent years: “The outsourced professional football department has the task of maximum performance orientation and the associated sporting goal of always doing as well as possible, of course corresponding to the budget.”
In addition, a long-term commitment is only possible if the numbers are concrete, emphasizes TSV 1860: “To this day we do not know of any conditions in a converted Grünwalder stadium, although we only (…) with a significant improvement in profitability supportive attitude and enter into a new contractual relationship. At other Bavarian locations, more modern stadiums only incur 20 percent of the stadium costs that we have to pay.”
The six-year-old also rejected a long-term lease model. “In order to be able to think about such a model, it would be necessary for there to be a significant increase in capacity to at least 25,000 spectators and for mixed commercial use. This was publicly denied by the state capital, so that such a model can be considered in our Thoughts can’t play a role at the moment.” In any case, Thursday was another complicated day for Munich football.