Felix Zwayer has experienced the hate on social media.

It hit him last season after he officiated the Bundesliga's top game between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich. A controversial penalty decision caused much discussion, with Dortmund's Jude Bellingham indirectly accusing the 41-year-old umpire of bribery, an allusion to the betting scandal that hit German football in 2005.

Zwayer himself is not active on social media, but received anonymous hate mail, and according to police reports, there was even a death threat circulating online.

This is not an isolated case. Referees are regular targets of hostility on the Internet. The possibility of open discussion is often abused by trolls, anonymous individuals who feel free to attack without restraint or consequence. Partially as a result of this, the German refereeing system is struggling with a noticeable decline in recruiting young referees, insiders like Zwayer said.

"When I started in 1994, we had around 80,000 referees in Germany. Today, there are about half that number," Zwayer told DW. "How are we supposed to attract young people when there are full-on social media rants about referees every weekend without objectivity? That's not very sexy. Young people aren't up for that."

The personal threshold for becoming a referee is now "enormously high" due to the discussions online, Zwayer said. 

Amateur games without real refs?

For Lutz-Michael Fröhlich, a former Bundesliga referee and now managing director of sports and communications at DFB Schiri, an initiative for refereeing services at all levels of the game in Germany, the sector has a massive image problem.

"When in doubt, the referees are to blame. The referee is the scapegoat. That is the general perception. There is a lack of backing and appreciation for their effort and performance," he said.

Fröhlich wants players and coaches in the upper leagues to make positive comments about referees in public because that would set an example and what professional soccer does often finds imitators.

"What we see on Sundays in the district league or with the youth is often a mirror image of what happens in the Bundesliga," he argued.

The situation at the grassroots level is dramatic, he said. "If the downward spiral in referee numbers continues, many games in the amateur and youth sectors will soon have to take place without impartial referees."

Prosecuting insults

"The decline in referees is not exclusively a German problem," Bibiana Steinhaus-Webb told DW. The former referee, who in 2017 became the first female referee to officiate matches in the men's Bundesliga, sees a trend that is European wide.

"We have to deal with this problem with young referees everywhere. It will be a big task for the associations to continue to make refereeing attractive in the future," she said.

The 43-year-old confirms that the poor image of referees, fueled by hostility on social media, is the main problem. "In England, there has been a specialist department in the Football Association since 2020 that deals with online abuse and is pushing for the introduction of new laws," she noted. 

"This commitment is quite successful and should be seen as a model for other associations," said Steinhaus-Webb, who has been working for Professional Game Match Officials Limited, as director of the women's department for more than a year. The organization is responsible for high level women's games in Britian. 

The misery of social media

"It must be possible to prosecute and punish these insults. No one would accept such insults on the street, so why should identical statements be acceptable online?" Steinhaus-Webb argued. 

But for DFB Schiri's Fröhlich, one thing is clear. "As long as referees — whether at amateur level or in the top leagues — are constantly criticized and insulted online, it will remain difficult to inspire young people into these positions."

This article was originally published in German.