"I want to hope that the clubs depend on me" - the investor unpacks after the ARD report

Created: 2022-01-20 09:01

By: Gunter Klein

Patronage Gerhard Klapp: "I hope so, that the clubs depend on me." © Screenshot ARD

The ARD report "Billion Game" reveals the payment in amateur football.

For investor Gerhard Klapp the most normal thing in the world.

Munich

– Gerhard Klapp is an easy victim. Vain without end. The cosmetics entrepreneur from northern Hesse - bleached teeth, solarium complexion - gives a tour of his company, a painting of him in a tsar's costume hangs on the wall. Gift of "an admirer". Then he poses in front of his sports car, the gullwing doors are folded up. On the sports field, Klapp wears a green Louis Vuitton jacket with a fur collar, too youthful for his mature age. And he says sentences like: "I hope that the clubs depend on me." He has supported six clubs in his region for 15 years and has invested up to two million euros. Or should I put it better: given to those involved. Yes, money is often distributed via "the famous envelope," he admits. And: "I have few amateur contracts."

But they would have to be completed if payments were to go beyond the monthly limit of 249.99 euros for an amateur footballer;

taxes and social security contributions would have to be paid, it would be more expensive.

Officially, only one percent of the army of 700,000 recreational footballers has an amateur contract - and that doesn't correspond at all with the research of the ARD investigative team led by Hajo Seppelt, whose most recent report was on television on Wednesday evening: "Billion game." It's about them Payment culture in amateur football.

After an appeal via various portals, 10,134 female players and mostly male players (8055 from the age group 18 to 39) registered.

Not representative, but sufficient for solid data collection according to reports from Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-University.

"It will trigger a small earthquake."

Sports lawyer Thomas Summerer on the ARD report.

The results: Over 60 percent have already received money, in the fifth highest league 89.9 percent, in the district league (8th league) still 36.4 percent.

Payment is often made in kind: from a bogus mini-job for a girlfriend to vacation trips and building land.

The flow of money in German amateur football is likely to be 100 million euros a month, i.e. over a billion a year, 500 million of them black, from hand to hand, not tangible for the tax authorities,

"It will trigger a small earthquake," believes Munich sports lawyer Thomas Summerer.

He outlines the dangers that slush funds entail: "Associations are threatened with withdrawal of non-profit status." The result would be a wave of bankruptcies.

And players go into the punishable area of ​​"wage tax reduction and tax evasion".

Payment in amateur football: Profiteers are well-educated players

All of that sounds massive, but the DFB thinks it is appropriate to put the numbers and totals in context: “Only around 3 percent play in the 4th, 5th and 6th leagues.

Almost 60 percent of the teams are located below the 9th division.

This puts the picture into perspective that payments are made to players in almost all 24,300 football clubs.

Very many clubs, whose budgets are mainly financed by membership fees, are consciously and increasingly investing in club and youth work," is how the DFB reacted to the ARD documentation.

In any case, the beneficiaries of the system are well-trained players who could also pass a few classes higher, but market themselves better in a lower league that they "shoot to pieces", as Belmin Bikic, 23, active in the district league, says.

And in many places there is someone who finances it because he wants to be the admired patron.

Like Gerhard Klapp.

He employed the player-coach of one of his clubs in his company: Alexandre Cucu, a Moldovan.

Klapp doesn't even know his first name, for him the employee is just Cucu, and he allows himself to laugh because he's paying.

(Gunter Klein)