With the World Conference Center in Bonn, the planners of the German Football Association have chosen a place steeped in history. The German Bundestag met here for the last time before moving to Berlin almost 23 years ago. Since then it has been thoroughly modernized.
The DFB, which will once again elect a new president on Friday (from 10:15 a.m.), will want more than just one or the other parallel – with Bernd Neuendorf or Peter Peters a new start after years of crisis should succeed. And at least the whole thing should look highly democratic.
At the meeting of over 250 delegates, which the DFB aptly calls “the German football parliament”, the result seems to have been decided for a long time. Although the elections are secret, due to the distribution of votes in the DFB Bundestag, the former NRW State Secretary Neuendorf arrives as a candidate from the powerful amateur camp around permanent official Rainer Koch as a big favorite.
“I hope that if I’m elected, I can do it a little more calmly than is usual in football,” said the career changer after his nomination of the “German Press Agency”.
Peters is supported by professional football gathered in the German Football League. Whether closed by all 36 clubs has not been finally clarified. The former CFO of FC Schalke 04 bears the burden of his decades of work in the football business, most recently even as interim president of the DFB
“The DFB has a credibility problem, it is viewed from above and no longer arrives at the base,” said Peters on the ZDF “Sportstudio”. “It’s a question of togetherness, of culture. And that’s where I stand for change.”
Quota for women in the DFB is always an issue
Both candidates bring their own team to Bonn. For the football base, there are rather unknown names for the vice positions that are also filled in the Bundestag. Apart from the former national player Célia Sasic, who is to fill the newly created position of Vice President for Diversity and Diversity in the Neuendorf government.
The proportion of women in the DFB has been an issue again and again in recent months. In the end, the reform movement “Football can do more” did not nominate a candidate. “Why should we go into a competition whose result is already certain?” said co-founder Katja Kraus of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and evaluated: “Two candidates who come from the existing DFB system and are each assigned to one camp are truly not a democratic achievement.”
New elections necessary after Keller’s resignation
The DFB grandees defend the process before the election, including Koch, who has long since become the face of the DFB, which is in great need of reform, in parts of the public.
The current interim president is “a cleavage,” wrote Fritz Keller in a sensational statement by three ex-presidents of the DFB. Because of Keller’s resignation in May 2021, a new election must be held on Friday. The 64-year-old, who was celebrated as a candidate for all those involved in 2019, addressed the lawyer Koch during a meeting with the name of a Nazi judge – and then became the fourth president since 2012 who did not go voluntarily.
Koch will no longer run for the position of 1st Vice President, but wants to be elected to a normal Vice President in Bonn. He may have to prevail in a secret ballot against the sports scientist Silke Sinning from Peter’s team.
Whether Sinning will remain in the race even if Peters is defeated in the first presidential election is an open question. Ultimately, she was nominated by the Bavarian Association, which Koch heads. The impression remains that this is primarily intended to counteract the accusation that Koch was undemocratically re-elected to the presidency.
Peters has announced that if he is elected he will not work with Koch. Neuendorf remained much more diplomatic. The fact that Koch represents the DFB on the executive committee of the European Football Union UEFA and that Peters sits on the council of the world association FIFA illustrates the confused balance of power in the association.
Summer fairy tale affair employs the DFB
“There has been a noticeable lack of harmony at the top of the DFB in recent years,” Neuendorf told the “Frankfurter Rundschau”. The loss of image is “serious. The general expectation and also my goal is for the DFB to calm down again.”
It is questionable whether this will be possible in the near future. On Thursday, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported again about further inconsistencies in the summer fairy tale affair of 2006, which has been a burden on the association for years. The dubious cash flows relating to the home World Cup, which was so celebrated at the time, have still not been finally clarified. Changing that would be extremely difficult for both Peters and Neuendorf.
In the best tradition of the federal government, the new leader will first move after the meeting in Bonn. The new association headquarters in Frankfurt/Main, which cost well over 100 million euros, is ready so far, but the way from the Frankfurt city forest is not quite as far as from Bonn to Berlin. Incidentally, the DFB planners chose the World Conference Center because the corona protection regulations in North Rhine-Westphalia were more favorable for a face-to-face event.