Do Khedira and Wolf take over?
DFB has apparently found a Bierhoff successor
06/02/2023 11:58 am
After the debacle at the World Cup in Qatar, Oliver Bierhoff has to leave the DFB. Rudi Völler will take over the job temporarily. According to a report, two familiar faces will shoulder the legacy in the future.
The successor to Oliver Bierhoff at the German Football Association (DFB) seems settled. Former world champion Sami Khedira and trainer Hannes Wolf are to form the sporting management as a kind of dual leadership. A corresponding report by the Sportbuzzer portal coincides with dpa information. Accordingly, the duo has long been considered a desired solution internally.
Khedira should primarily take care of the strategic orientation of the association and after the farewell to Rudi Völler, who will limit his commitment as director of the senior national team until the home European Championship in 2024, will become the face of the sporting management to the outside world. There he would also be the contact person for the women’s national team at the DFB, which should continue to be mainly looked after by Joti Chatzialexiou. Khedira’s coming has been an open secret for months. The 36-year-old would first have to give up his position as an adviser to Bundesliga club VfB Stuttgart.
The previous U20 national coach Wolf should primarily take care of the youngsters and talent training at the DFB. According to Sportbuzzer, DFB Vice President Hans-Joachim Watzke personally campaigned for the promotion of the former youth coach at Borussia Dortmund, where he was from 2009 to 2016. After that, Wolf worked for VfB Stuttgart, Hamburger SV, KRC Genk in Belgium and on an interim basis worked for Bayer Leverkusen. At the DFB he took over the U18s in October 2020 and returned after his engagement at Bayer in 2021 to coach the U19s and later the U20s.
After the World Cup debacle in Qatar at the end of 2022, the DFB parted ways with Bierhoff as managing director of the national teams and academy and announced back then that it wanted to spread his responsibilities over several shoulders.