<b>DFB-Pokal quarter-finals Preview: Schalke against Bayern</b>
Everything that happened in the Bundesliga’s stadiums outside the pitch over the weekend overshadowed what happened on the pitch so much that in the end, no one talked about the matchday’s victors in the Bundesliga standings. One of them was FC Bayern. But even hours before the meeting with Schalke in the DFB-Pokal, it is difficult to focus on the football.Bayern was already leading 6-0 when some of their fans almost caused the game to be abandoned. Since then, hardly anyone has talked about the performance Hansi Flick’s team had delivered during the first 60 minutes of the match. The actions a lot of fans in several Bundesliga stadiums took have been too important and far-reaching, even though the game was another, albeit small, milestone in Flick’s still young career as Bayern’s head coach.Even the draw between RB Leipzig and Leverkusen a day later that allowed Bayern to extend their lead in the standings to three points hardly played a role in any discussion of the weekend’s events. As things stand, Bayern can afford to lose one game more than Leipzig, which could become a vital advantage considering both teams’ remaining fixtures. Bayern still has to play away to such sides as Union Berlin, Borussia Dortmund and Leverkusen. And then there is the home game against Gladbach and not to forget all the other minor stumbling blocks along the way. Leipzig’s final run-in, on the other hand, in the main sees them face opposition from the lower half of the table. Their most difficult tasks will arguably be the away games at Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim as well as the home games against Dortmund and Freiburg.<a href="#back-to-focusing-on-football-not-quite-yet"></a>Back to focusing on football? Not quite yet.Despite the matchday’s good news for FC Bayern, the events of the weekend cannot be easily brushed aside. What happened there was not the beginning of an escalation. It was the final stage of an escalation of a conflict that has been going on for years, with all sides increasingly adopting radical positions.For one, there is the DFB, which did not live up to its role as a mediator. Then there is a faction of supporters who, in the specific case of FC Bayern, have drifted further and further towards extreme positions, because they felt misunderstood. And finally there is FC Bayern itself, who have failed to establish a strategically wise platform for discussion and mutual exchange with their supportersThere is no uniform entity “the Ultras”. By making this generalization, the problems already start. The Ultras, who have to be be regarded as a youth movement of the 21st century even though they do not consist exclusively of young people, are too heterogeneous a group for that. Their members come from a broad variety of backgrounds, with everything from people from socially difficult circumstances to well-off people being represented in these groups – with all the positive and negative aspects that go with this.<a href="#power-struggle-instead-of-dialogue"></a>Power struggle instead of dialogue?This also means that there are people who would be perfectly able to communicate with those responsible at FC Bayern and the DFB on an equal footing. However, as we were told by a well-connected fan in the “Südkurve” (FC Bayern’s Ultra block), the club has not done enough to establish a dialogue with these people in recent years.Instead, the positions on both sides have become increasingly entrenched. The interests of all sides moved into the background against a scene of events that saw all long simmering conflicts escalating last weekend. The most obvious route the DFB could now be tempted to take to “solve” the problem is clear: to issue a collective punishment on all Bayern supporters by barring them from attending future away games at Hoffenheim. This, however, could release a potential for further escalation among organized supporters throughout the country on an unprecedented…
Everything that happened in the Bundesliga’s stadiums outside the pitch over the weekend overshadowed what happened on the pitch so much that in the end, no one talked about the matchday’s victors in the Bundesliga standings. One of them was FC Bayern. But even hours before the meeting with Schalke in the DFB-Pokal, it is difficult to focus on the football.Bayern was already leading 6-0 when some of their fans almost caused the game to be abandoned. Since then, hardly anyone has talked about the performance Hansi Flick’s team had delivered during the first 60 minutes of the match. The actions a lot of fans in several Bundesliga stadiums took have been too important and far-reaching, even though the game was another, albeit small, milestone in Flick’s still young career as Bayern’s head coach.Even the draw between RB Leipzig and Leverkusen a day later that allowed Bayern to extend their lead in the standings to three points hardly played a role in any discussion of the weekend’s events. As things stand, Bayern can afford to lose one game more than Leipzig, which could become a vital advantage considering both teams’ remaining fixtures. Bayern still has to play away to such sides as Union Berlin, Borussia Dortmund and Leverkusen. And then there is the home game against Gladbach and not to forget all the other minor stumbling blocks along the way. Leipzig’s final run-in, on the other hand, in the main sees them face opposition from the lower half of the table. Their most difficult tasks will arguably be the away games at Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim as well as the home games against Dortmund and Freiburg.<a href="#back-to-focusing-on-football-not-quite-yet"></a>Back to focusing on football? Not quite yet.Despite the matchday’s good news for FC Bayern, the events of the weekend cannot be easily brushed aside. What happened there was not the beginning of an escalation. It was the final stage of an escalation of a conflict that has been going on for years, with all sides increasingly adopting radical positions.For one, there is the DFB, which did not live up to its role as a mediator. Then there is a faction of supporters who, in the specific case of FC Bayern, have drifted further and further towards extreme positions, because they felt misunderstood. And finally there is FC Bayern itself, who have failed to establish a strategically wise platform for discussion and mutual exchange with their supportersThere is no uniform entity “the Ultras”. By making this generalization, the problems already start. The Ultras, who have to be be regarded as a youth movement of the 21st century even though they do not consist exclusively of young people, are too heterogeneous a group for that. Their members come from a broad variety of backgrounds, with everything from people from socially difficult circumstances to well-off people being represented in these groups – with all the positive and negative aspects that go with this.<a href="#power-struggle-instead-of-dialogue"></a>Power struggle instead of dialogue?This also means that there are people who would be perfectly able to communicate with those responsible at FC Bayern and the DFB on an equal footing. However, as we were told by a well-connected fan in the “Südkurve” (FC Bayern’s Ultra block), the club has not done enough to establish a dialogue with these people in recent years.Instead, the positions on both sides have become increasingly entrenched. The interests of all sides moved into the background against a scene of events that saw all long simmering conflicts escalating last weekend. The most obvious route the DFB could now be tempted to take to “solve” the problem is clear: to issue a collective punishment on all Bayern supporters by barring them from attending future away games at Hoffenheim. This, however, could release a potential for further escalation among organized supporters throughout the country on an unprecedented…