opinion
New President
The DFB and the fairy tale of a new beginning
Renovators from old structures: The new DFB President Bernd Neuendorf
© Simon Hofmann / Getty Images
The German Football Association, the largest sports association in the world, will be led by Bernd Neuendorf in the future. The freshly elected president has announced that he wants to modernize the association, but no real cultural change can be expected from him.
In order to understand the problems of the German Football Association (DFB), it is worth taking a quick look off the pitch at the Klöckner steel group. It was founded at the beginning of the last century and is a dinosaur like the DFB, which was founded in Leipzig in 1900. Klöckner, however, has changed again and again. Most recently, the company built up a digital division, not at its headquarters in Duisburg, but in Berlin, with new people, in a newly founded subsidiary.
The old steel giant knows that innovation can only work if there is a real fresh start, without the burdens and entanglements of the past. At the DFB, on the other hand, people still haven’t understood this after more than 100 years, although the association is in need of restructuring, just like heavy industry was for a long time. A fresh start has often been conjured up by one of its presidents – and then work continued in the Frankfurt DFB headquarters, in the same structures, with the same people.
Now everything should get better again at the DFB, the largest sports association in the world with seven million members. This is what Bernd Neuendorf, 60, announced, who was elected the new president at the DFB Bundestag in Bonn this Friday. Neuendorf, SPD politician and former spokesman for the federal board, prevailed against Peter Peters, 59, supervisory board member of the German Football League (DFL) and former CFO of the chronically sluggish FC Schalke. Neuendorf’s win was expected as he came out of the amateur camp, which has far more votes than the pros who championed Peters.
Bernd Neuendorf a cleaner? doubts are warranted
It is doubtful that much will improve under Neuendorf in the association. For a long time, Neuendorf stuck to an official who embodies the old, scheming DFB: Vice President Rainer Koch, whose outstanding ability is to sit out affairs while people around him are being shot or resign voluntarily. Koch was the survivor at the DFB, it was always the others who were to blame. Koch, also a man from the amateur camp, survived them all – up to this Bundestag in Bonn. Surprisingly, Koch was voted out of office. The receipt for the past affair-tossed years.
There is now a lot to clean up for Neuendorf. The affair about the allegedly bought home World Cup 2006, the so-called summer fairy tale, is still a burden; moreover, new problems are arising in the present. House searches at the DFB are no longer a rarity; The public prosecutor’s office was only there last week and took files with them. This time it was about a payment from the DFB in the amount of 360,000 euros to a so-called communication consultant in Düsseldorf – although it is not clear what services were actually provided for this. There is now a suspicion of infidelity.
Ahead of a long, arduous journey
The reputation of the DFB has suffered badly in recent years and so has the office of president: Wolfgang Niersbach, who was hoisted to the throne in 2012, had to leave after three years because he had little enthusiasm to solve the mysterious summer fairy tale. His successor Reinhard Grindel had an expensive watch given to him by a Ukrainian oligarch, so he came under pressure and finally resigned. Most recently, Fritz Keller said goodbye to the presidency. He had compared his deputy Rainer Koch with the Nazi judge Roland Freisler. Shameful departures all. And embarrassing for such a powerful association as the DFB, which is deeply rooted in society with its 24,500 clubs.
Neuendorf must now rehabilitate his own office and make the DFB a respected institution again. It will be a long, arduous journey for him if he doesn’t decide to risk a radical new beginning – with new people in new structures. And regardless of old rope teams.
