Winter weather could endanger Bundesliga restart matches

St Pauli have said that their home game on Saturday against RB Leipzig could be endangered by forecast winter weather.

The German weather service DWD has issued a 24-hour severe warning for Hamburg from 7am Friday over expected heavy snowfall and high winds that could cause snow drifts.

"Given the weather conditions, we cannot guarantee that the match will be able to take place under the current circumstances," St Pauli said on Thursday.

The club said that they are only resaponsible for the stadium and pitch and had no influence on other issues like traffic. They said they are doing everything to stage the game as planned.

The German Football League (DFL) said earlier Thursday it expects all nine top flight games to go ahead.

But a DFL spokesman said their main concern were matches in the north and east of the country where the most severe weather is expected, apart from the Pauli match Werder Bremen v Hoffenheim and Union Berlin v Mainz.

"The DFL is alarmed. But as it stands now all games are set to be played," the spokesman said.

The matchday starts on Friday night with Eintracht Frankfurt v Borussia Dortmund and Frankfurt said they will bring in additional personnel to deal with snow and to guarantee safety at the venue.

Union fan clubs have said they would help shovel snow if necessary to make Saturday's game happen, and Bremen said they will bring in additional personnel.

VfB Stuttgart said they would travel to their late match Saturday at Bayer Leverkusen on Friday instead of Saturday morning.

Fans could have problems getting to matches because public transport has been disrupted by the winter weather.

Cancelling Bundesliga matches has become very rare due to technology such as heating systems preventing snowy and frozen pitches.

But the matches Bayern Munich v Union and Mainz v Union were cancelled in 2023-24 for safety reasons which included large amounts of snow on the stadium roofs which were in danger of falling onto spectators.

Amateur matches in Berlin and Hamburg have been cancelled for all of the weekend.