Germany may be a pioneer in the feminization of football, but until now it had never seen a woman at the head of one of its professional men’s clubs. An anomaly repaired, Thursday 1is January, with the entry into office of Tatjana Haenni, 59, as general manager of RB Leipzig.
A former Swiss international, with 23 caps for the Nati, this football enthusiast began playing at the age of 12, in Bern. After her retirement from sports in 1998, she tried her hand at a coaching career, but it was mainly in administrative and management positions that she distinguished herself.
President, among others, of the women’s section of FC Zurich from 2008 to 2018, she also worked for the Union of European Football Associations and the International Football Federation, leading programs to professionalize women’s football and taking part in the organization of several World Cups. She was also the first woman to sit on the steering committee of the Swiss Football Association, before adding, in 2023, a prestigious line to her CV by becoming general director of the National Women’s Soccer League, the professional women’s league in the United States.
“During our discussions, his expertise, combined with his in-depth knowledge, his assertive leadership and his strategic vision, impressed us”recognized his predecessor at RB Leipzig, Oliver Mintzlaff, who remains president of the supervisory board of the Saxon team. When her appointment was announced on December 10, the person concerned said “very excited to take on this new position” and convinced of “considerable potential” of the club, winner of the German Cup in 2022 and 2023.
The pioneer Maria Teresa Rivero
Founded in 2009 by the Austrian energy drink group Red Bull, RasenBallsport Leipzig – its full name – climbed the ladder to access the Bundesliga in 2016. Regularly qualified in the Champions League since then, it even reached the semi-finals of the prestigious European competition in 2020, before being eliminated by Paris Saint-Germain. He is currently 4e of the German first division championship.
If the entry into office of Tatjana Haenni is highly symbolic, it is because the Bundesliga is precisely the only one of the five major European championships to have never had one of its clubs managed by a woman. In France, the American Michele Kang was entrusted with the reins of Olympique Lyonnais – of which she had already bought the women’s section – in the summer of 2025 with the mission of saving it from the very bad situation in which it had gotten stuck. Marian Mouriño is at the head of Celta Vigo, current 7e of the Spanish La Liga, since 2023. Year in which Vanessa Gold became co-president of West Ham United, 18e of the English Premier League, which she still occupies.
Before them, in Italy, Francesca Menarini managed the Bologna club between 2008 and 2010, while Rosella Sensi succeeded her father Franco Sensi as president of AS Roma, between 2008 and 2011. Marina Granovskaïa, for her part, served as general manager of Chelsea, between 2013 and 2022, right arm of the owner and president, the oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Maria Teresa Rivero was the pioneer, appointed to Rayo Vallecano, a popular group in the Madrid suburbs in 1994, by her husband, the controversial businessman José Maria Ruiz-Mateos, then the main shareholder. In 1999, the stadium in which the team played was even renamed in her name (Estadio Teresa Rivero). A name abandoned when the club was sold, marking the end of her mandate in 2011. But this story ended badly: in 2018, the manager was sentenced to seven years in prison for tax fraud linked to the management of Rayo.
