DFB boss calls vice-president's Zelenskyy post 'insulting'

German Football Association (DFB) President Bernd Neuendorf said in a statement on Monday that the comment made by Vice President Hermann Winkler about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was intolerable and insulting.

"On the day when he and the Ukrainian people were awarded the international Charlemagne Prize, the mocking symbolism toward the Ukrainian president is intensified," said Neuendorf.

Winkler's post, which included a photo of a Soviet military memorial in Berlin's Treptower Park, referred to the inconvenience caused by security measures in place for the state visit of President Zelenskyy on Sunday.

"Berlin this morning. Thanks to a general order due to the visit of a former Ukrainian actor, the city is largely cordoned off, the Spree [River] partially closed to tourists," Winkler wrote.

His reference to Zelenskyy as a "former actor" was widely seen as an expression of disrespect for the Ukrainian head of state, even though the president was an actor and comedian before going into politics.

The matter will be discussed at a conference of the regional and state association presidents this week, but Neuendorf has already spoken to Winkler and made it clear how incompatible his actions were with the values of the DFB.

Winkler, in turn, has used his Facebook account — his Instagram account has now been deactivated — to attempt to walk back his comment, saying he would "not use that wording again." He also apologized for any upset caused and stressed that it would be wrong to label him a sympathizer of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said while he condemned the aggression launched in Ukraine by Putin, he said he also didn't "personally agree with everything Zelenskyy is doing."

However, Winkler, the DFB vice president responsible for youth football, has been known to make controversial comments in the past. Following Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, Winkler, who at the time was a member of the European Parliament, argued against imposing sanctions on Moscow. Such sanctions would damage "only ourselves and hit the eastern German economy particularly hard," Winkler told the magazine Super Illu.

Damage done

"This is not the attitude of the Berlin Football Association," said the head of the local federation, Bernd Schultz, in comments made to the dpa news agency on Monday.

"We have different values. You just don't attack a personality like a head of state like that."

The Berlin FA is one of five state federations that make up the Northeast German Football Association (NOFV), of which Winkler is the president.

Holger Stahlknecht, the president of the Saxony-Anhalt FA, expressed surprise at Winkler's post, describing it as "clumsy." Some expressed the fear that Winkler's post could damage the reputation of the entire NOFV.

The incident comes at a particularly inopportune time for the DFB, even beyond the fact that it came during a state visit. The DFB recently announced that the men's national team would play their 1,000th international match against Ukraine on June 12 in Bremen.

Edited by: Jonathan Harding