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Germany's football pyramid has a bottleneck.
Beneath the Bundesliga, 2. Bundesliga and 3. Liga, the fourth tier is split into five regional divisions (North, West, Southwest, Northeast and Bavaria), each of which produces a league champion.
So far, so good. But with only four teams being relegated from the 3. Liga each season, the sums don't add up.
An unsatisfactory solution is currently in place: the champions in the West and Southwest go up automatically while a third automatic promotion spot is rotated among the other three leagues in a three-year cycle. The fourth spot is allocated via a play-off between the winners of the remaining two leagues.
One champion always misses out and, increasingly, it's the champion from the Regional League Northeast, covering the territory of the former eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR).
In addition to Lok Leipzig's triple tragedy, former serial GDR Oberliga winners Dynamo Berlin fell short in 2022 and Energie Cottbus drew the short straw in 2023. This season, there is only one eastern German club in the 3. Liga: Hansa Rostock.
The struggles of the regions' football clubs are, to some degree, a result of continuing socio-economic disparities between east and west, which were also reflected in the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in recent state elections.
Even in 2026, not one of the 40 leading companies listed on Germany's DAX stock exchange is based in the former east (outside Berlin). Salaries remain lower, unemployment remains higher and the population is older and shrinking as young people move west.
The reason that automatic promotion spots are handed to the champions in the West and Southwest is simply because there are more men's football teams registered in those jurisdictions - because more people live there.
It is an argument that Ziane is tired of hearing.
"In that case, you might as well give us the automatic promotion spot because we attract bigger crowds," he says.
Indeed, the average attendance in the Regional League Northeast last season (3,125) was around twice as high as that in the other leagues. Lok Leipzig themselves had the fourth highest (6,352). More than 11,000 attended the local derby against city rivals Chemie Leipzig.
"Unfortunately, you don't get any points for tradition, crowds and history," says 39-year-old Lok chief executive Toni Wachsmuth, who does not have access to sponsors with the same financial firepower as his counterparts further west.
"The [western] leagues do have better economic foundations but everyone agrees that the current system is nonsense. Everyone needs to compromise but some officials are clearly putting their own interests and positions above the general good of German football."
