"The BFV directed us there": Würmtaler football clubs criticize the association's approach to the survey

Four out of seven football clubs from the Würmtal voted against the BFV's proposal to continue the season. Now they criticize the association's approach.

Würmtal - The Würmtal is a haven for the opposition in Bavaria. Four out of seven clubs voted against the proposal of the Bavarian Football Association (BFV) not to end the current season, but to continue it from September (if possible). Yesterday at noon, after a meeting of the board, the BFV finally announced that it was definitely going down this path. The criticism of the association has not waned after the vote and the subsequent decision by the BFV.

Ayhan Kurt from SV Planegg-Krailling: "Result raises questions"

Already on Tuesday, clubs contacted Ayhan Kurt, who informed him about some strange things. "They received a letter of thanks from the BFV for participating in the vote, even though they had definitely not participated in it," says the head of the SV Planegg-Krailling department. Kurt is not only concerned about the communication between the Bavarian soccer bosses, but also the result of the referendum last weekend "raises even more questions".

On its website, the BFV speaks of a "clear two-thirds approval" for its proposal to "end the 2019/20 season despite the corona pandemic" in a sporty way ". 68.13 percent would have voted for the model of the association, 31.87 against.

Almost 50 percent of the clubs do not vote for the BFV proposal

A completely different ratio results if one takes into account the number of clubs that did not vote. 1151 of the 4348 clubs involved in the game abstained and therefore did not agree with the BFV's proposal. Together with the 1019 clubs, which with their no clearly took a position against the application of the association, this makes 2170 clubs that do not explicitly gather behind the BFV. That is 49.91 percent of the football clubs in Bavaria.

"I don't know where the statistics come from," says Bernd Gegenfurtner. The trainer of TSV Graefelfing refers to surveys on the Internet that previously devised a completely different opinion.

In Westphalia, 90 percent voted to end the season

The survey by the Football and Athletics Association Westphalia (FLVW), after the BFV the second largest within the German Football Association (DFB), among its 1596 clubs gave a different impression: only 11.6 percent of the 1149 participating clubs spoke look for a continuation of the season. Unlike the fellow officials in Bavaria, the FLVW gave its clubs four options to choose from.

The BFV, on the other hand, only allowed a yes or a no to its proposal. Jens Rindermann also criticizes the procedure in the Free State: "There were no different alternatives." Like the department head at Gautinger SC, his colleague at DJK Würmtal, Thomas Gollong, expressed concerns that the BFV survey complied with democratic principles.

Only one option from the BFV: "No freedom of choice"

"There was no freedom of choice," says Gollong. For Gräfelfings Gegenfurtner, therefore, the suspicion arises that the clubs were influenced by the BFV procedure in their vote. "I make such a specification if I want to achieve a certain result," says the coach.

The procedure also has a flavor for the SVP and Kurt. "You were directed there. That was a preliminary opinion. ”The whole thing reminds him of the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey, with which Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured almost unlimited presidential powers. The fact that the opinion in Bavaria, as the BFV emphasized in advance, is not binding for subsequent decisions, almost no longer matters.

Würmtaler clubs consider the wave of lawsuits to be unlikely

Kurt not only considers the short time in which the association heard its decision to be "very crisp". Many questions had been left out of the BFV's proposal. "For me, the biggest humbug is that you leave out essential topics and only decide on them afterwards."

But not only the procedure, but also the reasoning of the association's top comes under criticism. BFV President Rainer Koch had previously drafted the threat that the association would risk a lawsuit wave if the season was canceled. "I can't imagine that for the letter leagues in particular," says Rindermann, referring generally to the lower amateur classes.

Especially since other sports associations practiced the end of the season without major complications, most recently the German Handball Federation. In the Netherlands, the season ended in the entire amateur football sector. "Officially, nothing is known about a wave of lawsuits," says Kurt, who is surprised where the fears of the association's superiors come from. So far they have not been documented in Germany.

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