In 2010, Lars Stindl left the then second division club Karlsruher SC to bring his footballing class to the bigger stage in Hanover (2010 to 2015) and Mönchengladbach (2015 to 2023). Now everything indicates that he is returning 13 years later: to the second division and to the smaller stage offered by the club where he had been trained since he was twelve: KSC.
The report has not yet been officially confirmed. But the fact that Stindl’s KSC contract should contain a follow-up clause that also includes the time after the end of his career should not have been insignificant for his decision to reject Gladbach’s offer to extend the contract and return to his home town of Wiesental in North Baden, where he built a house. His response to a concrete KSC offer is expected in the coming days.
Stindl, who cheered for Thomas Häßler in the Karlsruhe jersey as a child, also describes himself as a die-hard KSC fan. Such a person would be very welcome in the curve even if he weren’t a very good footballer. But that’s exactly what the eleven-time national player is unquestionably still. Gladbach’s captain has completed 24 of 29 possible games this season and scored five goals. Borussia would have liked to keep him, but that has been off the table for two weeks. If it is now announced that a still very above-average first division player will be hired by the ninth table in the lower house, the joy in Baden will know no bounds.
The transfer also entails risks. After all, Stindl, 34, who is close to his home and club and would forego at least three quarters of his salary in Gladbach, would still be by far the top earner at KSC. Whether the salary structure is beneficial to the working atmosphere will depend on how quickly Stindl acclimates to the rough second division. On the other hand, he would have two good footballers by his side in Jérôme Gondorf and Marvin Wanitzek at KSC. It is unclear who will replace six-man Tim Breithaupt, who will probably move to Augsburg, from the summer. But it will not be a wooden foot, because this type of player is on the index of coach Christian Eichner, who played with Stindl in the KSC dress.
However, those responsible for Stindl’s commitment have a communication problem to solve. Finally, the long-serving sports director Oliver Kreuzer was recently released because he was no longer able to “create values”, as it is called in the marketing language that is heard more often at KSC than in the past. That means: No young, viable players were developed that KSC could have sold profitably after they had matured. That doesn’t apply to Stindl, who will be 35 in August. In fact, apart from Breithaupt, who is currently injured, no player in the Karlsruhe squad, which is definitely not too young, would currently bring in a fee worth mentioning.
The KSC actually has to generate money by developing and selling talent
The KSC, with its meager budget even by the standards of the second division, has to commit and develop talent in order to ideally generate money with them years later. An internal analysis has unsurprisingly revealed that the club is at least in the league average in terms of sponsorship, ticketing and merchandising. The KSC only generated transfer income as well as never before. The former FC Bayern defender Kreuzer was conceptually more of the old school anyway. He was also happy to answer questions about medium-term planning to journalists with a dismissive hand gesture and the hint that the next two games were at stake. And then again around the next two. The establishment of a reasonably competitive scouting department was also neglected. In recent years, it has happened again and again that the respective coaches have found players with whom they have little use.
Under President Holger Siegmund-Schultze, who has been in office for almost two years, the KSC now wants to act more self-determined and build structures that will endure regardless of the league. But the KSC is not the only club where such prioritization causes conflicts. Only very few of the 18 second division clubs have mastered the difficult task of developing the professional squad, the infrastructure and the youth area in parallel. The small neighbors SV Sandhausen are complaining that every euro goes into the squad and the infrastructure is suffering. At the KSC, a lot of people are complaining about the opposite in only half-muffled voices: too much money is being invested in the stadium and office, and when it comes to transfers you can’t even keep up with Sandhausen.
After all, most fans appreciate that the times are over when the maxims of summer were thrown overboard in winter. And meanwhile the excitement after the dismissal of Kreuzer has subsided. Ultimately, changed majorities in the Advisory Board were fatal. In August, he extended Kreuzer’s contract until 2025 by a vote of 3:2. After a by-election, a 3:2 majority now voted for his dismissal. This quick back and forth now brings Kreuzer more than 600,000 euros in compensation. If only Lars Stindl knew.
