A federal chancellor is not an American president, but apparently does not have the status of Bayern Munich in the football environment either: there were surprisingly few security precautions around the DFB campus on Tuesday that would have been different if an American guest of state had visited.

But even on the lawn there was no chalk drawn to greet Olaf Scholz (SPD) on the DFB campus, which only officially opened in June.

There was still: "Welcome FCB" - the German soccer champion had trained on the pitch before his 6-1 victory at Eintracht.

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Daniel Meuren

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The lack of greetings to the chancellor matched the busy lack of excitement surrounding the chancellor's visit, who was at the DFB mainly because he wanted to talk about equal treatment for women in football.

During the European Championship, Scholz addressed a tweet with a clear request to the DFB: "It's 2022. Women and men should be paid equally.

That also applies to sport, especially national teams.” He added the striking hashtag #equalpay to his message.

National team director Oliver Bierhoff then answered quite harshly that he would like to explain the football business to Scholz.

The tone in which Bierhoff did so in the presence of DFB President Bernd Neuendorf and Célia Sasic, former national team goalscorer and Vice President for Equality and Diversity, is not known.

The conversation took place behind closed doors, neither side lost a word about the atmosphere of the conversation.

However, Scholz stuck to his point of view that he expects equal treatment from the DFB, although he specified his objection to the effect that he was referring to the team bonuses and not individually negotiated salaries.

Otherwise he still found warm words for football, its socially supposedly special power and promised the DFB, which promised a discussion process in the association bodies in the person of President Bernd Neuendorf, further talks.

Morning in the industrial park

In the morning, Scholz devoted himself to an even more important topic: energy.

In the Höchst Industrial Park, he was first shown a plant by the start-up Ineratec, which will produce synthetic kerosene from 2023, then he inspected four fuel pumps that will refuel 27 RMV trains with hydrogen from the end of the year.

The hydrogen is produced during production in the industrial park.

"Especially now that we see how dependent we are on energy imports from all over the world and in this case especially from Russia, it is important to know that we have a realistic, economically functioning technological capability that creates jobs and added value in Germany own,” said Scholz.

To point out to the Chancellor that a year's production of the synthetic kerosene produced in Höchst at Frankfurt Airport would be filled up after half a day, or that the hydrogen trains are needed, among other things, because some routes in the region are not electrified hardly had any time during the flying visit.

But anyway, it was less about details than about symbolism: that the chancellor shows up and expresses political support.

At the DFB he was more reserved when it came to symbolic images: After a good one-hour visit with a short tour and a four-minute statement, Scholz left the campus without even having kicked a ball.

The former Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard "Acker" Schröder would certainly not have refrained from taking pictures of the ball.

There were also no pictures of a conceivable demonstration.

In any case, no fans or players were seen in front of the entrances to the campus who could have demonstrated there for equal pay.

The mobilization of the masses in women's football has probably not come to that yet.