Due to a lack of referees, a Bundesliga star took to the pitch as a referee at his home club on Sunday.

Just one day after SC Freiburg’s 2-1 win over Mainz 05 on Saturday, Matthias Ginter was on the football pitch again – in an unfamiliar role. The 28-year-old was helping out as a referee in the B district league. He whistled the match between the second teams of SC March and SV Burkheim.

A German national player as a referee for the amateurs – sounds strange, but it has a first background. In the Freiburg district, as elsewhere, there is a shortage of referees. Therefore, the clubs have to provide the referees themselves.

“We still didn’t have a referee on Saturday and were therefore in an absolute emergency situation, as everyone we had asked had cancelled,” Marcher sports director Marc Friedrich was quoted as saying by Kicker. To avoid a cancellation, Friedrich knocked on Ginter’s door without further ado – with success: “Matze accepted immediately,” reported Friedrich, who is the best friend and best man of the Freiburg centre-back.

And so Ginter blew the whistle for the district league match less than 24 hours after Freiburg’s victory over Mainz. It ended with 6:1 and apparently went off without any special incidents. In the match report from fussball.de, only one yellow card is noted.

SC March is Ginter’s youth club. He played in the club’s youth section from 1998 to 2005. The people of March even named their stadium after the 299-time Bundesliga professional (Matthias-Ginter-Sportpark). Despite the connection, Ginter remained impartial: before SV Burkheim’s only goal, he had awarded the visitors a penalty kick.