Referee Felix Zwayer (40) was severely attacked after the mega fuss about his performance at the Bundesliga summit between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich in early December.
Now the referee speaks the threatening situation after the game in the Sky format “My story”: “There have been numerous messages on my official e-mail account that are unbelievable and which are also very difficult to deal with. The Berlin police wrote to me that there was a death threat against me on the internet. These are things that I couldn’t hide from my wife, especially because they affected me immensely.”
Young BVB star Jude Bellingham (18) attacked the referee particularly hard after Dortmund lost 3-2. The Englishman had indirectly accused Zwayer of bribery, alluding to the 17-year-old Robert Hoyzer scandal.
Zwayer describes what these allegations have done to his family life: “What happens when you’re scheduled for an international game three days later, try to load up this backpack and stand in the door and try to say goodbye to the woman like you’ve done in the past ten, 15 years and then you see how she bursts into tears, not because she misses me when I’m gone, but because she worries about me and maybe what’s going on at home. This is a situation that is very difficult to bear, to be honest.”
Sky moderator Riccardo Basile (30) posted a video on Instagram. In it, in conversation with Zwayer, he quotes from the letter from the police with the threat of the perpetrator to shoot the referee and his family. Among other things, Basile writes: “We urgently need to be careful in our society to show humanity. Things are changing at the moment. With regard to Felix Zwayer, clear boundaries were crossed.”
Zwayer also comments on Sky on the Hoyzer case. According to the court documents on the Hoyzer scandal, Zwayer, who helped uncover the affair, accepted money like Hoyzer at the time.
The referee now contradicted this on Sky and says: “I was never offered any money, I was never obviously told of any intended or carried out match-fixing. I have never received money from Robert for any involvement in any manipulation of a game.” Not even from anyone else, Zwayer added when asked.
Referee Zwayer is currently not refereeing any Bundesliga games after the Zoff at the summit game. “Zwayer took a holiday after his last international assignment before Christmas and is not active as a referee at the moment. That is self-determined by him,” said DFB referee boss Lutz Michael Fröhlich in the BILD program “Die Lage der Liga” a week ago on TV.
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