The debate about referee Felix Zwayer’s management of the top Bundesliga match between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich continues. However, since Monday, an investigation by the German Football Association against BVB player Jude Bellingham has been diverting the heated discussion about Zwayer’s decisions in Munich’s 3-2 win. The England international said in an interview with a Norwegian broadcaster after the final whistle: “You are giving this greatest game in German football to a referee who was previously convicted of game manipulation. What do you want to expect?”
The chairman of the DFB control committee, Anton Nachreiner, has announced that he wants to check Bellingham’s statement for “relevance to sports criminal law”. When asked by SZ, Borussia Dortmund stated that sports lawyer Christoph Schickhardt would represent the player as a lawyer. This could also apply to a criminal complaint that the referee observer Marco Haase is said to have filed against Bellingham “for insult and defamation”, but also against the former DFB referee Manuel Graefe. In interviews last summer, Gräfe expressed the opinion that the FIFA referee Zwayer should no longer whistle games at this level: “Anyone who has ever taken money should no longer be allowed to whistle professional football.”
The background goes back years: Felix Zwayer was involved – as a key witness, but also as a suspect – in the largest referee bribery scandal in German football. The DFB sports court (file number 177/2005/2006) sentenced Zwayer to a six-month ban because, as a line judge for Robert Hoyzer, who was the main accused at the time, he had accepted 300 euros. As payment for a manipulation of the regional league game Wuppertaler SV against Werder Bremen II in 2004. No further cases could be proven to Zwayer. Many in the industry think that it was a long time ago – and everyone has a right to rehabilitation.
Schickhardt is in dialogue with the sports court and the chairman of the control committee
However, contrary to custom, the DFB only published the judgment a good eight years late, namely in 2014. Since then, Zwayer’s involvement in the Hoyzer scandal has been taken up again and again when the Berlin referee makes controversial decisions. So also on this Saturday. Gräfe, who has not been active since last summer because of reaching the age limit, has been criticizing Zwayer for years, but also the DFB, which enabled Zwayer to become an international referee “despite at best average performance”, but who was often unable to cope with top games.
Christoph Schickhardt believes that the Bellingham statements are irrelevant to criminal law. The “freedom of expression” covers the statements. Schickhardt is in dialogue with the sports court and Nachreiner about the statements. In the context of the criminal complaint, for which Schickhardt has no mandate, referee observer Haase had taken the view, among other things, that the 18-year-old Bellingham could not have any knowledge of the earlier conviction of Zwayer by the DFB sports court due to his youth. That’s why Gräfe is the real culprit. How history lessons could still make sense under such a premise, if one were only allowed to judge events that one has witnessed as a contemporary witness – this question arises.
Bellingham is said to have researched his knowledge of Zwayer’s background on social media and on the Internet himself. His statements are interpreted in Dortmund more in the sense of Graefe: not as a specific allegation related to the 2: 3 against Bayern. But the high waves that Zwayer’s decisions sometimes generate are just inevitable in view of his background.