Berlin FA vice president vows to ban shirt number 88 over Hitler link

A Berlin football chief say he will continue his campaign to ban the shirt number 88 from the city's leagues after his motion was defeated.

Among neo-Nazis, the sequence of numbers is a disguised tribute to the phrase "Heil Hitler" as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Berlin Football Association vice president Özgür Özvatan tried to have the shirt number banned in November but his motion failed by 52 votes to 48.

"I will bring this motion again and again," he told dpa on Tuesday, stating that a ban would help Berlin clubs spot possible far-right members in their ranks.

"They cannot always have everything on their radar, and if we have this ban then they have an early warning system."

He said the motion was defeated because Berlin club BFC Germania 1888, Germany's oldest football club, were worried about the implications for their name while other clubs feared 18 would also be banned due to "Adolf Hitler."

Germany striker Jürgen Klinsmann famously wore 18, including when winning the 1990 World Cup.

Other German state associations have already banned the shirt number 88, including Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt.

In the men's Bundesliga and the second division, players can only wear numbers from 1 to 49. But at Bayer Leverkusen for example, fans are not allowed to ask for 88 on their replica shirt.

Last year, the German Football Federation and Adidas stopped selling national team shirts with the number 44. The design of the numbers accidentally resembled the SS logo from the Nazi era.