While celebrating his team’s victory against Schalke 04 two weeks ago with fans on the sidelines, Ballack climbed onto a fence and joined the insulting chant being sung by the Bayer Leverkusen supporters.

His supporters were thrilled, but in Cologne, the taunt was not so well received.

FC Köln boss Wolfgang Overath said: “Of course you don’t do something like that. It was a stupid mistake.”

The German Football Association agreed. Its tribunal fined the star, who remains captain of the national side despite not having played with the team for more than a year.

Ballack apologized two days after the game in a message on Leverkusen’s website.

“It certainly wasn’t clever of me to yell out the chant concerning FC Köln. This can happen sometimes in the euphoria of victory. But it shouldn’t.”

Ballack has 24 hours to lodge an appeal against the tribunal’s judgement.

DPA/The Local/djw