That Mainz is a carnival stronghold is common knowledge, and it shows at Mainz 05 as well. In his 2013 pictorial history of 50 years of the Bundesliga, journalist Daniel Stolpe called Mainz 05 “like a house of pleasure — just without politics.” Every Mainz goal is accompanied by the Narhalla March. For Fastnacht, the team traditionally appears in a special edition shirt in the colors red, yellow, blue and white.
Players and officials also sometimes join the great Rose Monday parade. The club’s affinity for Fastnacht is well known; less well known is that in 2019 the club staged its own carnival session for the first time — and used the occasion to verbally blast its own pyro-loving ultras. Tobias Rinauer from the club’s press office, appearing as the “retired rabble-rouser,” mocked them in rhyming dialect and told the little know-it-all pyromaniacs to go and sing their endless chants in the cathedral instead, where everyone could at least bring a candle.
