FC Schalke 04 is not only in the middle of the next sporting crisis, there is also an important decision to be made on the board: the position of CEO is still vacant. Now S04 seems to be getting closer to the solution.
According to the “Westfälische Allgemeine Zeitung”, FC Schalke 04 is in negotiations with a “top candidate” for the position of CEO. According to the newspaper, Revierklub is certainly “on the home stretch”.
The “WAZ” does not reveal who this person is. The only thing that is clear is that FC Schalke 04 want to announce the name in a few weeks.
The post has been vacant since Bernd Schröder left at the end of July. Schröder left by “mutual agreement”; he had previously been accused of not having prepared the club well enough for the special right of termination of the main sponsor ‘meinAuto.de’. Peter Knäbel, head of sports, and Christina Rühl-Hamers, responsible for finance, human resources and legal affairs, have formed the board level ever since.
The TV station “Sport1” recently brought Raphael Brinkert into play as the new Schalke boss, who is said to have been one of the candidates even before Schröder was appointed. According to the report, there has been no contact from the Royal Blues about Brinkert.
FC Schalke 04: Knäbel wants to take “responsibility”.
Meanwhile, the future of sports director Peter Knäbel, whose contract at Schalke expires at the end of June 2024, is also unclear.
“Sky” recently reported that Knäbel had lost credit with the miners’ bosses. It is very likely that the 56-year-old’s contract will not be extended.
Despite its uncertain future in Gelsenkirchen, the sports director has made far-reaching decisions in the past few weeks. At the beginning of June he installed André Hechelmann as the new sports director at S04, which the TV station said was followed with great skepticism in the executive suite.
Now, at the end of September, Knäbel and Hechelmann decided to end their collaboration with head coach Thomas Reis after only seven second division games in the current season. According to their own statements, the management duo does not yet have a successor in hand.
At the press conference on Wednesday, Knäbel was asked, among other things, about his short term at Schalke: “I’m doing very well with it because it just brings with it a lot of responsibility. Nine months isn’t short either, that’s for It’s not an unusual period of time for me either. Since you don’t know whether you’ll be involved in the future, I feel the responsibility is even greater. That’s why the motto applies all the more to me: the best for Schalke 04.”