NAUMBURG (SAALE)- The days of the soccer team the FC Ostelbein Dornburg, located in the Jerichow District in the state of Saxony-Anhalt are numbered. The Regional Court of Apeals in Naumburg has rejected the appeal of the soccer team to reverse the decision made in September to ban the team from league plan in the Kreisliga, the district league that is part of the Soccer Federation of Saxony-Anhalt. The last straw remaining is the hearing scheduled in November in Magdeburg regarding the future of the soccer team. Teh reason behind the team’s ban from league play is the following: 15 out of 18 players are Neo-nazis with a criminal record
, 59 out of 65 officials and many teams in the league have refused to play against the team due to history of violence and racist behavior. Already the team has lost its soccer field in Leitzkau, meaning they have no place to practice or even host games. If the decision in November is upheld, it is most likely that the team will be disbanded.
Yet this leads to a very important question to think and even discuss at the dinner table- let alone comment about:
Is banning a team from league play because of racial tensions an effective way to show solidarity to those wishing to live in a country, like Germany, which prides itself on multicultural issues?
And
What would be the basis for banning a team from a professional sports league? Are the actions of FC Ostelbein Dornburg justified for being banned from league play? Why or why not?
There are numerous arguments for and against such a measure that is being undertaken, but the question is, can your country imagine banning a team like this one because of right-wing tendencies. From an American’s point of view, sanctions and other financial penalties are imaginable, but banning a team from league play has not been attempted because of a different, but rather fixed structure where the leagues are owned locally and there are no elevator approaches where teams can promote itself to a higher tier. However attempts have been made to ban team mascot names on the basis of racial segregation, including California, which became the first team to ban mascots bearing Native American names, such as Redskins, and the University of North Dakota, which banned the Fighting Sioux name and is looking for a new mascot. Still, none of these measures have to do with the issue of real discrimmination, involving racial slurs and attacks on other teams, as Germany has witnessed in soccer, and in this case with the soccer team in Leitzkau. As presented in the Frage für das Forum, it is more unimaginable to take on a team with a history of racial slurs than to take on a team that carries a mascot that is considered racially motivated because of the behavior of the players towards one another. Yet despite this attempt to forcefully disband FC Ostelbein Dornburg, the question is whether other teams with a record of such violence will be next on the list, and if the team is reorganized and presented under a different name? If so, then it would be as ineffective as banning the NPD Nationalist Party in Germany, as attempts have been made over the years to do just that, despite having other smaller right-wing parties. In either case, we must find ways of showing these radicals that such slurs and violence are not to be tolerated in anyway, shape or form.
The question is, despite having such measures like this, what other alternatives do we have to draw the line? Think about it……
