Nerlinger praises her ex-colleague at TM
©IMAGO
After four months of vacancy, Hamburger SV has apparently found its ideal solution for one of the most important positions in the club. Kathleen Krüger is to succeed Stefan Kuntz and become the new sports director for the Rothosen. A personality that nobody initially considered when it came to replacing the 1996 European champions. As the “Hamburger Abendblatt”, which first reported on this matter, wrote, “the favored solution could surprise many”. The 40-year-old Krüger most likely won the race and is expected to sign with HSV soon. The majority of the supervisory board decided in favor of Krüger, who was said to have impressed with her concept and her expertise. Who is Krüger who should lead the newcomer successfully into the future? And how can she help the traditional northern club to be successful?
Christian Nerlinger, team manager and sports director at FC Bayern between 2008 and 2012 and self-employed as a consultant with the agency “CN Sports” for around a decade, only had appreciative words to say about Krüger in an interview with Transfermarkt: “Kathleen is a person you can rely on 100 percent. She was always extremely hard-working, reliable and goal-oriented. In addition, she wanted to constantly optimize processes in order to offer the team the best possible conditions.”
Krüger grew up in a family of Bayern fans in the northern suburbs of Munich and played for FC Bayern women between 2004 and 2007. In 2010 she initially worked in the FCB office as assistant to the then sports director Nerlinger. Both harmonized well with each other. “We had a very professional and trusting collaboration. In recent years, Kathleen has developed further and taken on more and more responsibility. I absolutely trust her to lead HSV and wish her only the very best,” explains Nerlinger at TM.
Between 2012 and 2024, Krüger worked as a team manager, took care of organizational matters relating to the team and established herself as a listener for the German record champions. Krüger was even the only person outside the team to become part of the team’s WhatsApp group. “I smile and remain silent, because of course a lot of funny photos and sayings are sent around,” she was quoted as saying in a club portrait in 2020. The potential new HSV manager has already received praise from top football celebrities. “She is the one who holds the team together. No matter what problems we can come to her with,” world champion and Bayern Munich legend Thomas Müller once told Sport Bild.
During her time as team manager, Krüger worked with star coaches such as Jupp Heynckes, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Hansi Flick and during this time won eleven championship titles, two Champions League successes and five victories in the DFB Cup. In 2022 she was awarded the state’s Order of Merit by Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder. Her current title in Munich is “Head of Organization and Infrastructure”.
Was there already a female sports director in the Bundesliga?
Krüger would be the first woman in this role full-time in the Bundesliga. However, HSV already had a marketing director in Katja Kraus between 2003 and 2011, who also took on interim duties as the club’s sports director in 2009 after Dietmar Beiersdorfer was dismissed. At RB Leipzig, the Swiss Tatjana Haenni has been CEO since the beginning of the year. The first female head coach in the men’s Bundesliga has been in place for two weeks: Marie-Louise Eta at 1. FC Union Berlin.
What will HSV’s sporting leadership look like?
With three match days to go, newly promoted HSV has a very good chance of staying in the league, five points ahead of the relegation zone in the Bundesliga. Krüger is said to be on the HSV board together with Eric Huwer. The man responsible for finances at the Hanseatic League acted as the sole board member after the separation from Kuntz at the beginning of the year. Krüger also knows sports director Claus Costa; they both completed a DFB management course together. Costa was also a candidate to succeed Kuntz, but should keep his current job.
These candidates were traded at HSV
HSV deliberately took its time and used a headhunter agency (Pedersen & Partner) to find the new sports director. According to the motto: thoroughness before speed. According to the “Hamburger Abendblatt”, HSV is also said to have “knocked on the door” of Frankfurt’s Markus Krösche and Stuttgart’s Fabian Wohlgemuth. Prominent names such as former DFB director Oliver Bierhoff, Stefan Reuter (FC Augsburg) and Borussia Dortmund’s former sports director Sebastian Kehl had previously been traded. Even ex-boss Beiersdorfer (who works in Ingolstadt) had made the rounds via “Sky”.
According to the Hamburger Zeitung, Hamburg was not looking for a new alpha animal, but rather someone with strategic skills, leadership qualities and experience in the next generation. A person who can easily fit into the existing management team. “Krüger should drive the strategic development of the club and make the youth work economically viable,” it says. This also includes specifying the transfer strategy and setting the guardrails for the squad structure – as before, the implementation lies with sports director Costa and chief scout Sebastian Dirscherl. According to reports, the former footballer Krüger, for whom HSV apparently does not have to pay a transfer fee, was about to be promoted to director of professional football at Bayern. Then came the call from Hamburg.