TV: For Lars Steinhöfel, football has something “toxic male”

For series star Lars Steinhöfel (“Unter Uns”), football “has something very toxic male”. “Football triggers me a lot. I have no reference to it,” said the 39-year-old from the German Press Agency. Maybe this is related to his father, who is a real “hardcore fan”. “Football has to be watched on Saturdays. That has something compulsive,” said Steinhöfel. He himself couldn’t understand that at all. “I think it is quite unimportant how a certain team played on this or that day.”

The actor also sees sport a structural problem. “Football also has something very toxic male, I think. I think that is also the reason why women’s football does not yet get as recognition as men’s football,” said Steinhöfel. Men just didn’t want that. “Also, they don’t want women to get more of the cake, that is, the money,” said the actor. He thinks that is unfair. “That is why I support women’s football – even if I am not so interested in football.”

Steinhöfel is one of the most famous soap actors on German television. For 20 years he has been playing Ingo “Easy” Winter in the “Unter Uns” series, which is shot in Cologne. It has been broadcast in the afternoon program by RTL since 1994 and is therefore one of the classics of the genre. In 2021 Steinhöfel and his ex-partner Dominik Schmitt won the RTL program “Summer House of the Stars”. He was born in East Berlin.