IIn the midst of the sporting boom, VfB Stuttgart threatens to dismantle itself at the highest level. In an unprecedented way, CEO Thomas Hitzlsperger and President Claus Vogt attack each other in public and go into the next round in a bitter power struggle. After the unusually sharp attack by Hitzlsperger, supervisory board chairman Vogt followed up on Thursday and defended himself against the allegations of the former national player.
“I, no we, all of us had certainly not thought it possible that a member of the board of a club publicly attacked his supervisory board chairman in such a manner,” wrote the 51-year-old in a personal statement. “Yesterday I was attacked publicly in a kind of way (and the public was confronted with partly untrue statements), I can’t leave it like that.”
Typical VfB, some might say. Although things haven’t been going so well for the newcomer in the Bundesliga for a long time, things are simmering behind the scenes. Instead of talking to each other, Vogt and Hitzlsperger only talk about each other. On Wednesday, the situation escalated when Hitzlsperger announced that he would also run for president at the general meeting on March 18, 2021. In a unique pursuit of power, the 38-year-old Vogt would like to force himself out of office in order to hold the chairmanship and presidential posts in personal union.
The reason for this step? Vogt alone. Says Hitzlsperger. “There is a deep rift through our club,” wrote the former professional. This crack runs between Vogt on the one hand “and the entire management board of the AG and numerous committee members from the executive committee, supervisory board and association advisory board as well as employees on the other hand”. Vogt’s desire to profile threatens “the existence of the whole association”. From Vogt’s goals and ideas, with which he started a year ago, “almost nothing” has been implemented. It was an attack like no other.
Only after long deliberations did Vogt defend himself. The four-page letter from Hitzlsperger was followed by a four-page letter from the President. And the entrepreneur from Böblingen made it clear what, from his point of view, is the main reason for the escalation of the power struggle: “The investigation of the data scandal.” In the run-up to the general meeting in summer 2017, employees of the club are said to have repeatedly passed member data on to third parties. A few months ago Vogt finally commissioned an external law firm to clarify who and what was behind it. Now he is making serious allegations against VfB and Hitzlsperger.
“Several attempts have been made in the past few weeks to torpedo the work of the Esecon law firm,” writes Vogt. “One can get the impression that there are people in and around VfB who do not want this explanation.” Hitzlsperger, on the other hand, had claimed that Vogt had pushed through the contract “without a tender, without a cost estimate and without a project plan”. The resulting “escalating costs” would have meant that the outsourced professional football club now had to support the club “to save it from insolvency”.
Not true, says Vogt. “The costs of clearing up the law firm were regularly checked by me and communicated to the colleagues in the presidium. In addition, these costs are largely covered by insurance! ”Whatever the truth, the image damage for the traditional Swabian club is already great.
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