TALENT POOL: Michael Kempter

Michael Kempter, the greatest hope of German refereeing

This is the first article of the recently established section "My Talent Pool" which will be monthly updated. The goal of this section is to focus on match officials who are young and talented and of whom I expect that we will see them soon in bigger tournaments or competitions.

As German, I will start with a German as well whose rapidly rising career has been interrupted last year by an "off-pitch-affair": Michael Kempter. Born in 1983, he lives in Sauldorf, close to Bodensee, works as bank clerk and enjoys his leisure time as he once said along with his younger brother Robert (1988) who functions as 2nd Bundesliga referee and Assistant Referee in Bundesliga, too.
When he was 11 years old he sent a letter to the former DFB Referee teacher Eugen Strigel in which he asked him how to become a referee. Normally, you may only make the referee exam in Germany when you have already passed the borderline of 14 years. Well, his letter seems to have allowed him to do the test with 12 years. On his 12th birthday, Kempter was invited by DFB to make the exam and he did - without mistake. Eleven years later, Kempter made history again: born in 1983 he was promoted in 2006 to become the youngest Bundesliga referee ever, even Markus Merk was older when he was selected for Bundesliga. He merely needed a total amount of 38 matches in Bundesliga before being set on the FIFA list in 2010, with 26 years. Until his career has been interrupted, he whistled 48 Bundesliga matches. What sort? Well. Stuttgart-Bayern, Hamburg-Dortmund, Leverkusen-Bremen, Bayern-Dortmund....these matches were refereed in the previous years by names like Fandel, Stark or Merk. Kempter got them, DFB had good reasons for it and you cannot find any match in which Kempter made a really big, essential mistake. No damn match. In addition, he managed to convince not only by correct decisions and good perfomances in difficult and important matches, no, he furthermore refereed the matches with a neutral authority which was authentic and one aspect was very impressive: the players accepted him. He was at one level with the players and at one age. He made jokes with him and was talking to them, the distance between player and Kempter was very small.

Michael Kempter and Manfred Amerell a few weeks before

What happened then? Well, most of the people were probably surprised when recognizing that Kempter disappeared from FIFA list only one year later. He refereed his (so far) last match in Bundesliga in January 2010 (Schalke-Nuremberg 1-0). A few weeks before, he reported to the former DFB Referee Chief Volker Roth that he was sexually harassed by his mentor Amerell. From this point, this case was in focus of German media every day, the result of it was that Amerell denied this accusation. In return, he published an e-mail which was written by Michael Kempter to Amerell two years earlier which was written ahead a semifinal between Bayern Munich and Internazionale Milano. The mail written by the young referee said: "Hi my honey. I am expecting the Bayern match, hopefully, they will be knocked out. Then, we will clink glasses.". Well, in the course of events Kempter said that this mail had been written by him but that he regreted the content. The phrase "my honey" was only to impress Amerell. If he had not followed his mentor's wishes, he would not have had any chance to get neither promotions nor appointments.
Then, Amerell requested recovery of damages by Kempter, several thousands. As a tribunal had to decide about this issue, DFB decided to take Kempter out of Bundesliga and put him into 3rd division. "As soon as the tribunal confirmed Kempter, he can get matches in this league again", said Herbert Fandel, who took the place of Volker Roth who retired as consequence to this affair.
As the tribunal decided in May that Kempter is right, he will probably get his first matches after all this in the season which will start in the next week.
One certainly has to weigh up his amazing talent and this incident including the possible partisanship. By the way: he refereed five matches of Bayern, Bayern won 4, one draw, no mistakes for or against Bayern. As Kempter has been regarded being the coming world referee I think that DFB cannot give up him.

What do you think? Has Kempter a chance to return? I am sure that he will be in Bundesliga in 2 or 3 years, but what about FIFA?