Original Summary

Djamal Ziane is a three-time league champion – but he does not always feel like it. This summer, for the second year in a row and for the third time in seven seasons, the Lokomotive Leipzig captain hoisted the trophy into the air having led his team to the title in the Regional League Northeast, the fourth tier of German football. But the memory is tinged with frustration because, just as in 2025 and 2020, Lokomotive's league title did not lead to promotion. While the other regional champions in the German fourth division were promoted to the nationwide 3. Liga, "Lok" faced a play-off against a representative of the Regional League Bavaria, Wurzburger Kickers. Ziane scored, but an injury-ravaged Leipzig lost 3-1 on aggregate. "Euer System ist krank," read a simple protest banner displayed by the 2,000 travelling supporters – "your system is sick". "It's the worst thing – injury aside – that you can experience as a footballer," Ziane tells BBC Sport. "Catastrophe doesn't cut it. It doesn't make any sense. If they really wanted to change it, they could do tomorrow." But it's not that simple. Matt Ford / A banner reading 'Your system is sick' was displayed at this year's promotion play-off Germany's football pyramid has a bottleneck. Beneath the Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga, the fourth tier is split into five regional divisions (North, West, Southwest, Northeast and Bavaria), each of which produces a league champion. So far, so good. But with only four teams being relegated from the 3. Liga each season, the sums don't add up. An unsatisfactory solution is currently in place: the champions in the West and Southwest go up automatically while a third automatic promotion spot is rotated among the other three leagues in a three-year cycle. The fourth spot is allocated via a play-off between the winners of the remaining two leagues. One champion always misses out and, increasingly, it's the champion from the Regional League Northeast, covering the territory of the former eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). In addition to Lok Leipzig's triple tragedy, former serial GDR Oberliga winners Dynamo Berlin fell short in 2022 and Energie Cottbus drew the short straw in 2023. This season, there is only one eastern German club in the 3. Liga: Hansa Rostock. The struggles of the regions' football clubs are, to some degree, a result of continuing socio-economic disparities between east and west, which were also reflected in the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in recent state elections. Even in 2026, not one of the 40 leading companies listed on Germany's DAX stock exchange is based in the former east (outside Berlin). Salaries remain lower, unemployment remains higher and the population is older and shrinking as young people move west. The reason that automatic promotion spots are handed to the champions in the West and Southwest is simply because there are more men's football teams registered in those jurisdictions - because more people live there. It is an argument that Ziane is tired of hearing. "In that case, you might as well give us the automatic promotion spot because we attract bigger crowds," he says. Indeed, the average attendance in the Regional League Northeast last season (3,125) was around twice as high as that in the other leagues. Lok Leipzig themselves had the fourth highest (6,352). More than 11,000 attended the local derby against city rivals Chemie Leipzig. "Unfortunately, you don't get any points for tradition, crowds and history," says 39-year-old Lok chief executive Toni Wachsmuth, who does not have access to sponsors with the same financial firepower as his counterparts further west. "The [western] leagues do have better economic foundations but everyone agrees that the current system is nonsense. Everyone needs to compromise but some officials are clearly putting their own interests and positions above the general good of German football." It comes as little surprise, therefore, that the latest push for change has come from the east, with clubs launching a new campaign in March 2025 with the slogan: "Meister mussen aufsteigen!" – champions must go up! Their proposal: a reduction from five leagues to four, with the precise geographical borders to be determined anew each season with the help of artificial intelligence, taking into account factors such as distance of travel to away games and attractive derbies. They call it the compass model. Because it can go in all directions. In return, the Regional League Northeast is prepared to compromise by giving up its emotional attachment to the territory of the former East Germany. "I want to get away from this east-west debate," says Tommy Haeder, the 35-year-old chief executive of Chemnitzer FC and figurehead of the reform campaign. "We've had a change of generation. Many older officials have retired and been replaced by younger people who don't have this nostalgia for the GDR." Haeder also emphasises the benefits that a fairer promotion system would bring for German football as a whole, arguing that eastern clubs would be better equipped to continue nurturing youth talent. "It's not in the interest of talent development when young footballers from Chemnitz are torn away from their homes and families at the age of 10 to join academies in Hamburg, Dortmund or Stuttgart," he tells BBC Sport. "The compass model is a model in which every region sacrifices a little bit to solve a much bigger problem. We're organised, we have a plan, we've made suggestions. Now it's up to the federations to act." The campaign has since gained the support of more than 80 clubs across Germany, from east to west and up and down the pyramid. Union Berlin, who were playing in the fourth tier as recently as the 2000s, became the first Bundesliga club to officially back the initiative, with club president Dirk Zingler saying: "The current set-up contradicts our understanding of sporting competition." Borussia Dortmund president

中文概览

中文标题： 无法升级者：德国联赛冠军却升不上去

莱比锡火车头队长Ziane三年内第三次夺德国第四级别东北地区联赛冠军，却仍无缘升级；球队在附加赛总比分1-3负于维尔茨堡踢球者。德国第四级分五区，但3. Liga仅四队降级，自动升级名额偏向西部和西南部，东北冠军常因轮换与附加赛吃亏，引发抗议。

  • 情报分类：综合情报
  • 分类依据：体育升降级制度与社会经济，非指定类别，归综合情报
  • 信息来源：英语新闻 / BBC News Top Stories
  • 发布时间：2026/10/2 14:37:49