German FA president calls for player salary cap to help keep fans

Mon, May 25, 2020
By publisher
2 MIN READ

Sports Briefs

THE President of German Football Association (DFB), Fritz Keller, says football must learn long term lessons from the coronavirus crisis to keep fans on board.

Keller suggested better financial controls and player salary caps to do this.

Germany’s Bundesliga was shut for more than two months in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, before becoming the first major football league to resume action last week.

“We have to learn from our mistakes, because the crisis is an opportunity to restructure football,” Keller said in a virtual address to the DFB’s extraordinary meeting on Monday.

“We need to bring professional football to the people, to their everyday world. So we need an improved financial control system and, yes, a salary cap,” he added.

Some German clubs were close to financial collapse after the first month of suspension, the league had warned, as it pushed for a restart.

But the restart has also been criticised by some as too early.

The DFB meeting also approved the restart on May 30, of Germany’s third division, with the last match day scheduled on July 4.

This was in spite of opposition by some of its members who had called for the season to be abandoned.

In a vote, 222 were in favour of a resumption of the division, with 12 voting against and 16 abstaining.

Germany had reported some 178,570 positive COVID-19 cases, while the death toll rose by 10 on Monday to 8,257.

Keller noted that football needed to think long term.

“Commissions for agents and immense transfer figure irritate society and estrange them from our beloved sport. Football has to offer satisfactory answers to these issues.

“We do not only need new rules, but also a new attitude, not to think just from season to season, as we painfully found out.

“Football as a whole has to live on long term perspectives,” Keller stated.

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– May 25, 2020 @ 18:40 GMT |

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