Dhe outgoing managing director of the German Football League (DFL), Christian Seifert, said goodbye to the German Football Association (DFB) in a media round a few days before his departure. The relationship between the two football associations is “at an absolute low,” said Seifert. As a personally liable member, he himself withdrew from the DFB Presidential Committee last year because he had been “lied straight to the face” several times.
A relationship of trust between the DFL and the DFB could only re-emerge, according to Seifert, if a personnel reorganization was carried out at the right places at the DFB, “not only in the foreground, but also in the background,” said Seifert. The DFL managing director, who is giving up his post voluntarily after 17 years, is alluding to the role of DFB Vice President Rainer Koch, who has played a central role in the various crises in the DFB in recent years.
Next March, the DFB will elect its fifth president within the past nine years. The association has also been led three times by a dual leadership due to various scandals and quarrels, currently by interim presidents Rainer Koch and Peter Peters. Seifert’s successor will be Donata Hopfen as the new DFL managing director next year. The managing director of Borussia Dortmund, Hans-Joachim Watzke, will again take over the chairmanship of the supervisory board from Peters on February 11, 2021, who is running for the DFB presidency alongside the amateur candidate Bernd Neuendorf.
When he left, Seifert also criticized the fact that the “Project Future”, which he and the DFB Director Oliver Bierhoff had been promoting since 2018, had been “hit the wall”, especially by the regional associations. The project, with which German football wants to promote talent development and return to the top of the world, is “fully” supported by 93 percent of the clubs, according to Seifert, but blocked again and again by the 21 DFB regional associations.
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