Woch after week, Bundesliga professionals get upset about the referees, complain, moan and make derogatory hand movements after decisions. Now two of them are to help polish the image of referees and slow down the decline in referees in German football. Or even better: to ensure that more new referees are trained than old ones throw in the towel.
So Nils Petersen from SC Freiburg and Anton Stach from FSV Mainz 05 will share the refereeing of a game in the Rheinhessen district league next Saturday for advertising purposes. He will approach the matter “with humility and respect,” said the Freiburg striker on Monday when the German Football Association (DFB) declared 2023 the year of the referee. Mainz midfielder Stach said he not only had to quickly learn the hand signals for advantage and offside, but also change his running patterns: “As a referee, you don’t want to have the ball, you want to avoid it.”
The professionals’ change of perspective is the start of a year that the DFB has dedicated to the motto “Love sport. Run the game”. A “heroic goal”, claimed DFB expert Moiken Wolk, who called for a “new culture of interaction and appreciation”. Incidents that spoil the work of referees quite often, especially on amateur courses.
In this sense, Deniz Aytekin said that “the real heroes in the amateur leagues” whistle. The Bundesliga referee will stand by Petersen and Stach as an observer on Saturday. Since the three respect each other and use first-name terms, even if they argue on the pitch, I’m sure things will go well. “The decisive factor is always the type of communication,” said Petersen. The DFB currently has 50,500 active referees, ten years ago there were more than 70,000.
