Will Clemens Tönnies come back to FC Schalke 04 as a strong man? An opposition to the current management team is apparently forming. Also present: Peter Neururer.
He resigned almost four years ago due to massive public pressure, and now there is heated discussion about Clemens Tönnies again at the deeply fallen FC Schalke 04 – 30 years after his family joined the traditional club.
Royal Blue was threatened with bankruptcy when his older brother Bernd was elected president on February 7, 1994. The situation is currently similarly precarious: the heavily indebted club might not survive relegation to the third division.
Harsh criticism of the board
And then the billionaire from Rheda-Wiedenbrück reappears – as the driving force of an opposition group that has been harshly criticizing the current Schalke leadership for weeks. In the fall, Tönnies himself accused his successor Axel Hefer as chairman of the supervisory board and the board of mismanagement: “It almost seems as if they are deliberately trying to push the club over the cliff.”
Tönnies, the strong man at Schalke from 2001 to 2020, belongs to the group of the five most important sponsors as well as some “formers” who are massively attacking Hefer and Co. “This is not an opposition,” emphasized former coach Peter Neururer, who himself took part in meetings, in an interview with the Sport Information Service, “these are all Schalke players who have an obligation to think along and help.”
“One mistake after another”
The points of criticism: The club’s management has “never been involved in professional football” and is making “one mistake after another – that triggers panic in the club.” The second division team, put together with the aim of getting promoted again, could “never be promoted even by a magician, i.e. me”.
It is clear “that things cannot continue like this.” At the beginning of March, the sponsor group around the long-time club patriarch is scheduled to meet again with the club management in order to “come to a common denominator”. With Tönnies, Neururer believes Schalke “would never have gotten into this situation.”
Is Tönnies coming back?
The meat manufacturer resigned under pressure from numerous fans in the summer of 2020 after racist comments and a corona outbreak in his slaughterhouse. Quite a few fans now want him to return. Tönnies became a member of the newly created Schalke supervisory board in 1994 after his brother Bernd died after just 145 days as president. On his deathbed, he promised him that he would “take care of Schalke,” he later said.
At that time the club had debts of 14.6 million marks, last year it was 165 million euros. During this period, Schalke built its arena using its own resources, won the UEFA Cup, the DFB Cup three times, was runner-up five times and played in the Champions League eight times.
200 million euros liabilities accumulated
But Tönnies also made a mistake with Christian Heidel as sports director, who initiated the decline with expensive, bad purchases and left more than 200 million euros in liabilities. This enormously restricted the scope of his successors, which accelerated the fall.
Now he and the other major sponsors are putting Hefer, once one of his biggest critics, under pressure. The current boss is accused of being too close to the Ultras, incorrect composition of the board and inadequate search for sponsors – and also rejected considerations of selling marketing and catering rights. So far, Tönnies himself has ruled out a return.
