The DFB’s supervisory committee said Wednesday it was making an official application to the DFB sports court to exclude Dresden next season, and had informed the club of its decision.

Dresden has already been fined €20,000 for failing to control its fans in Dortmund’s Signal Iduna Park stadium last Tuesday. A violent minority of the travelling 12,000 fans blocked the team buses and vandalized fast-food kiosks, toilets and seats.

The match also had to be halted three times to remove missiles and fireworks thrown onto the pitch, and fights broke out between opposing fans after the game. Seventeen people, including two police officers, were injured.

Dortmund may also be fined €10,000 for allowing Dresden fans to smuggle large quantities of fireworks into the stadium.

But the Cup ban could entail a much tougher punishment for the club, since even a short run can be very lucrative for a second division team like Dresden. “This season we earned roughly €1.5 million in the Cup,” Dynamo Dresden’s general manager Volker Oppitz told news magazine Der Spiegel.

Oppitz slammed the DFB’s decision. “That surprised us. We weren’t expecting that,” he said. “We consider the punishment draconian, completely out of proportion.” Oppitz said the club had already hired lawyers to consider a legal response.

Dresden has been forced to answer to the DFB for its fans’ behaviour five times this season already, and has been fined twice. The club has now been fined 14 times in the past three years.

The club itself has condemned the violence, and called on fan organizations, in particular the “Ultras Dynamo,” to work with them to control its members.

The Local/bk