“We apologize to all the people we hurt with our actions,” MTG Horst said in a statement. The Essen popular sports club describes it as a mistake to have hired André Fuhr as a coach before a review commission of the German Handball Federation submitted its report.
Since the end of March, the commission has been investigating allegations from numerous handball players that Fuhr had, among other things, inflicted psychological violence on them. As a result of the allegations, André Fuhr was without a job for ten months. At the end of July, MTG Horst hired him as coach of the men’s handball team in the association league.
Look at your own mistakes
Criticism of this step came from the Essen Krupp Foundation, among others. MTG Horst supported this as part of the prevention project “Essen Initiative against Sexual Violence”. The Krupp Foundation wrote to Deutschlandfunk at the end of August about MTG Horst’s commitment of André Fuhr: “We very much regret the decision made and distance ourselves from it.”
A few days ago, MTG Horst announced André Fuhr’s release. The club regretted this step and justified it by saying that “public pressure had built up in the club environment”. The current message now reads differently. The club is now also looking for faults within itself, admitting that it is overwhelmed, and is apologizing for those who were deeply affected by the appointment of the controversial coach André Fuhr.