After the hate posters against RB sporting director Max Eberl, 1. FC Köln will probably not face any repercussions. The incident was noted in the match report.

1. FC Köln breathed a sigh of relief: The pure hatred that RB sporting director Max Eberl was subjected to on Saturday in the form of abusive posters by Cologne supporters will probably have no consequences for FC. Referee Martin Petersen noted the incident in the match report and thus put it on the DFB’s agenda – but the DFB will not initiate an investigation. According to information from the SID, Eberl has decided not to press charges.

“According to the DFB’s legal and procedural regulations, proceedings for unsportsmanlike conduct by spectators due to the display of banners (…) are only initiated if the person affected by the announcement has submitted a written application to the DFB for the opening of a sports court proceeding,” the German Football Association announced at the request of the SID. However, Eberl had not done so at the request of the DFB Control Committee.

But should Petersen have intervened during the Bundesliga match between 1. FC Köln and RB Leipzig (0:0)? “We did notice that posters were being displayed, but we couldn’t read what was written there from the pitch,” Petersen told Bild after Cologne fans displayed several insulting banners against Eberl, mocking his exhaustion illness, among other things.

If Petersen had read the texts, he said he would have “thought about measures and probably initiated them”. However, whether the DFB’s three-stage plan, which provides for measures ranging from a stadium announcement to the abandonment of the match, applies in this case is disputed.

Eberl at least, who is not very popular in Cologne partly because of his past with arch-rivals Gladbach, had reacted stunned to the posters. “I would be interested to know if these people know what burnout exactly means. Burnout means that people exhaust themselves until they can’t do it anymore and beyond that point,” said the 49-year-old.

Eberl had resigned from his post as managing director of sport at Borussia Mönchengladbach in January 2022 due to emotional overload and, after a time-out and self-discovery phase, had joined RB in December 2022 under critical scrutiny from many quarters. However, he had “never before” experienced so much hatred and dislike as on Saturday in Cologne since his return to professional football.

FC subsequently apologised, and managing director Christian Keller (43) made it clear that the posters had not been brought into the stadium without FC’s approval: “If individuals are discriminated against, those are not the values of 1. FC Köln.”

Eberl’s defamation also caused a stir among Bundesliga rivals, with BVB sports director Sebastian Kehl describing the posters as “unacceptable” on Bild-TV.

In September, a similar case occurred when fans of Borussia Mönchengladbach displayed defamatory posters against Eberl during the match against Leipzig. At that time, the stadium announcer admonished the fans to take down a poster, as referee Patrick Ittrich would otherwise interrupt the game.

The three-step plan states that criticism in the form of banners or chants can be “very direct, rude, unobjective or in bad taste” without the game being interrupted. This was only possible in the case of “personalised threats of violence”, such as a person in crosshairs.

There had been such a crosshair banner in Hannover in 2020, for example. At that time, the now deceased Red Bull founder and RB shareholder Dietrich Mateschitz was the target of the 96 supporters, and even the police investigated. Hoffenheim owner Dietmar Hopp had also been vilified in the same way.

Gladbach was fined after the incident in September. FC now seems to have got off lightly.