85 people had to receive medical care on Friday during the cup first round game between third division team SV Waldhof Mannheim and second division team 1. FC Kaiserslautern, and 35 police officers were injured. The game was on the verge of being abandoned several times and the start of extra time, in which Lautern scored late to win 1-0, had to be postponed by 20 minutes. The Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Manuel Hagel (CDU) spoke of a “high-risk game with an announcement”, not wrongly.
The terrible images from Friday evening surprised many active football fans only in terms of the extent of the riots. These had been announced: The “Waldhof verrecke” derby shirts, which the entire curve was wearing, had already been sold in Kaiserslautern at the previous home game against Karlsruher SC. In Mannheim, however, a fake leaflet (“Keep crossings on the Rhine bridges closed”) was distributed warning of a “Lauternschweine plague”. Both fan groups also received visits from friendly scenes in Frankfurt (Waldhof) and Stuttgart (FCK) on Friday. A peaceful outcome of the game was anything but likely.
Immediately after the draw, the game between Mannheim and Kaiserslautern was identified in fan circles as the game of games, and not one of the first round games with Bundesliga participation, although they would undoubtedly have promised better sport. Football is often viewed differently in the corners than in front of the television. For every football watcher, the attractiveness of a game is not measured by the expected quality of the pass. And for every fan curve, a lost derby weighs more heavily than three lost “normal” games.
Waldhof's sports director accuses FCK player Marlon Ritter
That's exactly why players are often crowd favorites, despised by their opponents and loved by their own supporters. Players like Lautern's Marlon Ritter, for example, who goes into every derby as if it were the last and who was of course right in the middle of the turbulence on Friday evening. At least that's how Waldhof's sports director Mathias Schober saw it, who made Ritter indirectly responsible for the escalation in his own fan curve. The Lauterer “let off steam in the way he likes to provoke,” said Schober. “He took his time at every turn and was really provocative.”
While that's true, Schober's statement still seemed like a cheap diversionary tactic. Even a corner taken slowly does not justify dozens of Waldhof fans breaking open a gate to the interior and fighting with the police. It is also true that throughout the game, objects were repeatedly thrown onto the pitch and onto the Lauter players, especially from the home areas. Immediately before the Mannheim curve escalated and fireworks were shot from the FCK block towards the main stand, Waldhof keeper Thijmen Nijhuis ran towards Ritter as if bitten by a tarantula. He had been hit by a beer cup and was arguing with Gonçalo Gregorio at the time.
However, Ritter had already turned away and tempers seemed to have calmed down. Until Nijhuis came rushing in, a pack formed - and both fan camps went crazy. It remains to be seen whether the Waldhof keeper simply didn't have himself under control or whether he wanted to get his own fans in shape for added time. This behavior also follows a pattern. Last week, in the equally explosive game against KSC, Ritter had to have his first serious discussions with the referee after just a few minutes. But it was also clear that the KSC players were really looking for duels with Ritter.
That's exactly how the Waldhöfer players did it on Friday - certainly in the hope of provoking a dismissal for a player who seems to consist entirely of adrenaline in derbies, but who saw his last red card in the 2013/2014 season. Ritter may be a provocateur, but he knows exactly which line he must not cross in order to stay on the pitch.
Mannheim's coach Rui Mota refuses to shake FCK coach Torsten Lieberknecht's hand
However, he is no more suitable as a de-escalation trainer than his coach Torsten Lieberknecht. He always looks particularly sincere after explosive games, but according to reports, he sometimes goes overboard verbally during the games. In any case, his Mannheim colleague Rui Mota ("I'm not a hypocrite") refused to shake Lieberknecht's hand after the game and justified this at the press conference: "You have to behave during the game too. Afterwards, you don't have to come at me with 'well played, we won'. I also drive my team on, and the other side does that too - but threatening someone is not the way."
FCK managing director Thomas Hengen, however, condemned what happened in the stands. "What happened in the stands was terrible - from both sides. A derby shouldn't turn out like that, it's damaging to us and to football," said Hengen. In the meantime, he didn't believe that the game could be played to the end - referee Robert Schröder was under a lot of pressure. The fact that FCK player Ibrahim Kanaté scored the winning goal for his team shortly before the end of extra time was ultimately just a side note.
