Short History of RED ZOMBIES

It happened in the summer of '87! Alittle group of young students and daytallers meet each other to watch the European Cup final. During the boring match most of the visitors in this group were talking about their own football careers, which mostly ended, because they had no fun in playing football in german bureaucratic pettiness.
So they decided to take place in a "wild" Football League, founded by sports students at the "Freie Universität" at Westberlin. But first they had to practise. The ground for practising was the biggest park at Neukölln, a huge quarter of Berlin, called the "Hasenheide" (a kind of park like Hyde Park or Central Park.

From this moment on the team took part in a lot of "wild" tournaments on different pitches (i.e. whole Football-Pitches, little ones or even in the hall). As different as the pitches were the manning of our team, with great fluctuation. But there were two points easily to see: The team lost almost every match and none of the players were a member in a real Football-Club. Some changes came due to the "Big Berlin Student Strike" in 1988/89. Some players left our team and also the city of Berlin, some new players came. So it was unavoidable for our team to win the first match in 1989.

In 89/90 there was a lot going on in Germany, specially in Berlin. The German "Reunion" came and with it there came a lot of problems with fascists and racists. Most of our players didn't focus their political engagement on university alone, most of us were facing the problems in general. Some of us put their interest in supporting the migrant football-team of BFC Türkiyemspor, which was a target for the East German Right Wing Hooligans and Fascists. But the Berlin Antifascist Football Supporters organized themselves in the AFFI (Antifascist Football-Fans Organization / Fan means Supporter). A part of this broadly based Organization were players of our team.

In winter 1990 our last participation in semi-official football-sports should happen. It was the first time we called ourselves "Red Zombies" (Red T-Shirts were painted with stridently looking fonts ;-) ). A bagatelle caused a two-minute-punishment for 2 of our 4 players. But the time, we were short-handed, our rivals couldn't hit the target. From this moment the legend exists, that our defense is insurmountable. In fact, we didn't shoot a lot of goals all the time, but we don't get a lot of goals against, too!!

As I said, this had been the last "official" tournament, the Red Zombies took place!

In 1991, the first time the so called "Berlin-Antifascist-Cup" took place, which, of course, the Red Zombies couldn't miss. This Cup Tournament still exists, this year it has been the 15th anniversary. So it is a very important happening for all Antifascists and left-wing-footballers in Berlin.

Some of our players are engaged in independant political work for the people of our quarter. Since the later Eighties we've had an autonomous social & political centre, called the "Krümelladen". This centre was cleared in summer 1992 by the police. From winter '92 we found a new home in "Stadtteil- & Infoladen LUNTE" (Lunte means fuse in german), where you can meet us nearly every saturday afternoon, when the work is done (i.e. playing football).

We are from the northern quarter of Neukölln. A high proportion of people living there are migrants (lot of them in 4th or 5th generation). There's a lot of bad and racist agitation in german media against Neukölln. It's becoming a typical "Ghetto-Quarter". The liberal political class demands for Neukölln to be one of the multicultural quarters in Berlin, but thwarts every kind of intercultural doings and activities. Every ethnical community stays on their own. The cynical construction of so called "parallel societies" is pressing ahead their social marginalisation.

Neukölln is one of the poorest quarters in the whole of Germany. The unemployment rate of Northern Neukölln is almost the highest in Germany. About 45% are on supplementary benefit, perhaps even more!?

This whole situation may lead to a great catastrophe! It's also a place for recruitment and mobilisation for right-wing and fascist groups. For german fascists as well as for turkish or arabian fascists.

So working in a social centre is not easy in such a situation. A lot of these marginalised persons are addicted to drugs and very incalculable (i.e. dangerous).

Our way to get together a lot of different people is playing football. On our homeground (Berlin-Hasenheide) we have a warm welcome for everybody who doesn't show racist, sexist an antisemitical resentment. Far from it! We want to show, that solidarity is the basic principle for us, for football and for life as well!

We are not supporters of one team or club, we want to support the game itself. We are not organized in Supporters-Groups of one of the big, commercial and capitalist clubs of different premier leagues of the world. Some of us do have sympathies and antipathies for different clubs in Germany, but our target couldn't be to support a club in this business part of football. We want a broad-based football, not a commercial spectacle with folcloristic (supporter-)attachments.

Red Zombies Neukölln against Professional Football Attacare il razzismo

The only solution – Social Revolution!