Sunday, May 09, 2021
“I’m not a regicide”
DFB crisis reaches the next level of escalation
The rifts within the DFB and its leadership seem insurmountable. This shows the renewed escalation around President Fritz Keller. Amateurs and professionals are irreconcilable. In the end – as is so often the case – it seems to be about one thing in particular.
The next escalation stages in the power struggle of the German Football Association (DFB) have ignited. Despite the prepared impeachment, President Fritz Keller desperately clings to his post and wants to legally conduct the upcoming sports court process with ultimate consistency. At the same time, the fight between the amateur and professional is raging more and more violently in order to gain the authority of interpretation before the presidium’s decision on the Keller case.
By engaging a lawyer, it finally seems clear that the badly ailing DFB boss does not want to bow to the increasing pressure. Keller’s legal advisor has already informed the chairman of the sports court, Hans E. Lorenz, that he will represent the interests of the president in relation to the Nazi scandal he sparked. Lorenz confirmed that. Only if Keller resigns or is removed from his position in the meantime does the process become obsolete. “If the president is no longer a president, we can close the book,” said Lorenz.
Last Monday, the DFB ethics committee brought the case to the association’s internal court. It is the first time that a DFB President has to answer before the sports court. Keller, who had been the focus of a power struggle at the top of the DFB for months, compared Vice President Rainer Koch with the notorious Nazi judge Roland Freisler.
Koch goes on the offensive
Through his verbal derailment, Keller dramatically exacerbated the association’s leadership crisis. The presidents of the regional and state associations renewed their call to resignation on Friday with a large majority and, in parallel, called for the 64-year-old to be ousted. Due to the 33 yes votes with only three abstentions, Koch considers it impossible for Keller to remain in office. “A president must have the support of the amateur associations,” said Koch: “The 21 state and five regional associations are now expecting a reaction from Mr Keller with great unanimity.”
Since it doesn’t look like the desired resignation reaction, plan B becomes more and more likely. Accordingly, the presidium would have to convene a board meeting with the agenda item “Removal of Fritz Keller”. Should Keller continue to refuse to resign, this step should take place in the coming days. Then there is a crucial test within the committee. Because although the professional around DFL boss and DFB vice Christian Seifert can hardly support “his man” Keller due to the unspeakable statement, the professionals are likely to push for the end of the cellar opponents at the same time.
But while General Secretary Friedrich Curtius and Stephan Osnabrügge have already indicated their departure, Koch does not want to leave the field under any circumstances. In a media offensive at the weekend (detailed Facebook post, interview with “Welt am Sonntag”, visit to the ZDF sports studio), the amateur boss ruled out a resignation. Instead, Koch once again raised serious allegations against Seifert (who described him as “paranoid”) and made it clear that the professionals should be kind enough to remain silent when asked about the appointment of the amateur elite.
The accusation that he was the regicide of German football in view of the numerous presidential resignations in recent years was rejected by the chef, who has been the association’s vice-president since 2007. “If I am the regicide of German football, then Christian Seifert, Peter Peters and Hannelore Ratzeburg are also because they have been on the Presidium for at least as long or longer as I have.”
The horror scenario of the professionals
At the same time, Koch described the opaque contract with a communications consultant as very lucrative for the DFB, accused ex-President Reinhard Grindel of his allegations in his direction of “lower motives”, worked out Keller’s mistakes and brought solidarity payments from the professionals for those under the coronavirus. Talking to amateurs suffering from pandemics.
When Koch briefly mentioned the “hot iron” basic agreement, it became clear that it was all about money. This contract between the DFB and the German Football League (DFL) expires in 2023 and urgently needs to be renegotiated. According to the contract, professional football actually has to give three percent of its income to the DFB. Since the sum, capped at 866 million euros in 2013, no longer has anything to do with reality, many amateur representatives want to see more money.
The fact that it could be Koch who negotiates the new contract for the DFB is considered a horror scenario in the professional sector. Because although Koch has made it clear that as a pure “man of amateurs” he could never preside over the multi-layered association as president, he on the other hand emphasized the smooth process under his two-time interim presidency in cooperation with the then DFL President Reinhard Rauball.
To prevent Koch as a renewed interim boss, the professionals would be only too happy to see a president by the name of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. The outgoing board boss of Bayern Munich has no interest in a “Harakiri action” and pleaded for “calm” at the DFB. In order to ensure exactly that, anti-corruption expert Sylvia Schenk came into play as a transitional manager. She is “ready for a transitional period” in order to “bring the DFB into calm waters with a team of independent people”. With this goal, however, some have already started in recent years – the result is known.
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