Bizarre power struggle rages
There is great alarm at VfB Stuttgart
March 15, 2024, 7:45 p.m
The board of VfB Stuttgart calls for calm and unity amid the internal power struggle. The current situation at the club’s political level is “a particular burden on practically all levels and comes at an inopportune time,” says a statement from the club.
The quarrels in the leadership of VfB Stuttgart continue. After the statement by President Claus Vogt, who was voted out as head of the supervisory board, and the association’s advisory board, vice president Rainer Adrion and board member Christian Riethmüller also spoke out in a separate statement on Friday – and distanced themselves from the 54-year-old. They explained that they could not have agreed to the explosive statement “in this form”. Accordingly, they had not signed it either.
The next announcement followed two hours later, this time from the board of the Bundesliga club’s AG. “The current situation at the club’s political level is a particular burden for the entire club at practically all levels and comes at an inopportune time,” it said. Chairman Alexander Wehrle and his colleagues called for “everyone to work closely together” and want to work “actively with all committees in a compact working group to formally clarify existing problems regarding future-oriented structural issues, especially regarding the chairmanship of the supervisory board.”
Adrion and Riethmüller had previously regretted the course of the meeting on Tuesday, at which Vogt was voted out as chairman of the supervisory board and replaced by Tanja Gönner. “The spin-off promise that the president of the eV is also chairman of the supervisory board has been on the table since 2017 and, in our view, should not be changed in the future without involving the members,” explained Adrion and Riethmüller.
The new investor Porsche “linked up the concrete expectation in the investment negotiations” that Vogt would give up the chairmanship of the supervisory board, it said. “After the president accepted this in writing, the other members of the executive board and the majority of the supervisory board agreed to it. Our hope was that we would find a common solution for the benefit of the association and its members.” In Adrion’s and Riethmüller’s opinion, the members are “always directly involved in the decision-making of the association.” The influence of the parent club on the AG is always guaranteed.
Vogt and the club’s advisory board had described the entrepreneur’s deselection as “legally questionable”, raised the question of whether VfB “still belongs to its members” and expressed doubts as to whether this development would result in the Stuttgart team violating the 50+1 rule, which is fundamental to German football is still being adhered to. It prevents a donor from getting the majority of votes and thus the last word in a club.