Uli Hoeneß spoke about the so-called gold steak affair of Franck Ribery and defended the French. The president of FC Bayern Munich also spoke about the commercialisation of football and its tax evasion.
“I listened carefully to the story, it was fake news. Franck was abused there,” Hoeneß said at a panel discussion in the Bonn Academy for Research and Teaching, referring to the gold steak affair: “The only mistake was that he didn’t slap the steak against the wall. He didn’t even eat the steak. He should have clapped it to the wall and everything would have been fine.”
Ribery had been served a gold-plated steak in a noble restaurant in Dubai in January and had to take harsh criticism of the social media to celebrate it, whereupon he reacted with obscene insults.
FC Bayern imposed a fine on the offensive player who will leave the club after the end of the season.
During the round of talks, in which Schalke supervisory board chairman Clemens Tönnies and bishop Dr. Franz-Josef Overbeck also took part, Hoeneß also commented on the ever-increasing transfer fees in football.
“I think a lot about it, but I don’t have a solution for how to play at the top without commerce, commercialisation and globalisation. I have great respect for the work of SC Freiburg, but it is also clear that they can never win the Champions League. Either play in the concert of the big ones or in the amateur league,” the 67-year-old clarified.
And continues: “I don’t want to buy a player for 80 or 100 million. But if you want to keep up with Manchester City, Liverpool or Barcelona, you have to do things that I don’t like. We got Hernandez, the good thing is we can do it from our time deposit account.”
Accordingly, high player salaries at FC Bayern are also justifiable. “At FC Bayern, the players earn the most, but this year we’re also making the biggest profit in our history,” said Hoeneß. “The FCB pays 100 million euros in payroll tax, which benefits the state enormously.”
Hoeneß also spoke about himself on the subject of taxes. He had “made a huge mistake” when he had evaded taxes for years: “But in my position, I was always aware of my social responsibility even before that. And after that, I took even more care that they didn’t criticize me anymore. I’ve managed to do that quite well to this day.”
