Bayern Munich president Herbert Hainer celebrates the club’s social commitments

In an interview for FCBayern.com, Bayern Munich president Herbert Hainer touted the club’s important focuses beyond the realm of sport. Sport, community, life — all intertwined. Call it politics if you wish, or simply values. Asked what Bayern Munich should stand for, Hainer pointed to the social commitments it demonstrated in 2022.

“That the sport and our financial stability are certainly the basis for everything here –- but that FC Bayern is much more than just its success,” Hainer said. “We want to reach people on and off the pitch and set standards.

“We succeeded in that once again in 2022: I’m thinking, for example, of the findings of the independent study into FC Bayern during the Nazi period that we commissioned, or of our ‘Reds Against Racism’ campaign weekend, the presentation of our touring exhibition on the Nazi period at the Capitol in Washington, the contemporary witness talk with Holocaust survivor Abba Naor at the FC Bayern Campus, or the 100 or so Bayern fans who cycled in memory of the victims of the Munich Olympics massacre 50 years ago.”

It’s not only the club leadership espousing the importance of social values. Players like Leon Goretzka and Manuel Neuer led the way for the German national team at the Men’s World Cup in Qatar in reportedly being the organizers of a team-wide protest against FIFA’s clamping down on the planned use of the OneLove armband by several teams.

And as Hainer said, values are more than just spoken: actually standing for them means repeatedly and consistently living up to these standards — which, in the grander scheme of things, are far more important than the excellent standards the club is setting on the pitch.