Attendance 13,000 Venue Bruno-Plache-Stadion Referee Bernd Stumpf (Jena) | Date 22 March 1986 Event 1985–86 DDR-Oberliga | |
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The shame penalty of Leipzig (German: Schand-Elfmeter von Leipzig) was a controversial penalty decision by referee Bernd Stumpf during a match in the 1985–86 season of the DDR-Oberliga between Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo, which took place on 22 March 1986 at the Bruno-Plache-Stadion in Leipzig. Following the match, the Deutscher Fußball-Verband (DFV), the umbrella organization for football in East Germany, for the first time permanently banned a referee.
Contents
Background
The game between Lokomotive Leipzig and BFC Dynamo took place on 22 March 1986 at the sold-out Bruno-Plache-Stadion in Leipzig in front of 13,000 spectators. While the defending champions and record title-holders from Berlin led the table before the 18th matchday, the hosts Leipzig, in fourth place, had to win if they wanted to keep up in the race for the championship.
Summary
Leipzig took the lead from Olaf Marschall in the second minute and kept their lead into the break. In the fourth minute of stoppage time, referee Bernd Stumpf awarded a penalty to BFC after a duel between Leipzig player Hans Richter and Bernd Schulz of BFC, with its legitimacy not completely clear on the television images. Frank Pastor converted the penalty for Dynamo for the match to finish as a 1–1 draw, leaving Leipzig six points behind BFC with eight matchdays remaining, and now in fifth place, seemingly out of the title race. The fact that Leipzig finished only 2 points behind BFC at the end of season gave the game retrospective importance.
Consequences
Due to the alleged long-standing decisions that had gone the way of BFC for years, a tense and aggressive mood could be seen before the match. After the controversial penalty decision of referee Stumpf, unprecedented conclusions were drawn at the association level of East German football. The chairman of Lokomotive Leipzig, Peter Gießner, and high ranking SED officials of the district of Leipzig spoke openly of fraud and demanded that such important games no longer take place during the trade fair, "since even the foreign guests could notice some of the filth". Initially, Stumpf was given a one-year league suspension, but eventually he was permanently banned as a result of continuing negative headlines. The refereeing committee of the DFV was suspended and replaced by new members. In various reports, this game went down in history as the Schand-Elfmeter von Leipzig, or shame penalty of Leipzig.
Through a training video from a different perspective, which was published in 2000, it was shown that the penalty was correctly awarded and that the sanction of referee Stumpf was unjustified.