Wehrle attacks the President harshly
The next bang comes at VfB Stuttgart
March 29, 2024, 8:04 p.m
There is the next detailed statement in the conflict between the club management of VfB Stuttgart. In an interview, the CEO addresses the president. Alexander Wehrle accuses Claus Vogt of having caused “great damage” to the Bundesliga club.
In the course of the club’s political power struggle at VfB Stuttgart, CEO Alexander Wehrle criticized club president Claus Vogt in an unusually harsh manner. “Claus Vogt has caused great damage to VfB in the last few weeks,” said Wehrle in an interview with the “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” and the “Stuttgarter Zeitung”. He has now been “in professional football for 22 years, but I have never seen a president single-handedly give an interview past everyone in the club in which he makes such a sweeping attack,” said Wehrle.
Wehrle is referring to an interview that Vogt, who was heavily criticized, gave to “Kicker” a few days ago. Vogt thereby broke his silence and ruled out resigning as president. He criticized, among other things: “I’ll put it a little exaggeratedly: If the club and its members are not careful, it will degenerate into pure folklore at our VfB. Then in the end it only provides the tradition and the members and fans the atmosphere in the stadium “said Vogt. “The rest is determined solely by those who turn the levers of the AG: the board of directors, the presidential committee and the supervisory board.”
The background is a power struggle at the top of the Bundesliga club that has escalated. First, Vogt was voted out of office as head of the AG’s supervisory board, breaking a promise he had made to the members for years that the president of the association should always remain chairman of the control committee. Public statements followed from the various sides in the conflict. The organized fan scene demanded the resignation of the executive committee. The new VfB investor Porsche also wanted the change at the top of the supervisory board, which is now led by Tanja Gönner.
Wehrle cannot understand Vogt’s accusation that “the interference of capital goes far too far” among the Swabians. Wehrle said he had “never heard a statement from Vogt that he had a problem with the legal form,” said Wehrle: “It is important to me to emphasize that 50+1 is an iron principle at VfB and is always upheld.”
Vogt also said in the “Kicker” interview that he had agreed to the new donor under “great time pressure” to resign from his position on the supervisory board. Wehrle now said it was Vogt’s “personal” decision. “We presented him with two options,” said the director of marketing and sales, Rouven Kasper: “On the one hand, a future with Porsche. And on the other hand, we told him that the existence of VfB is not at risk even without this entry and we We’ll take a different path with him. He made the decision as to which path we should take.”