analysis
Bernd Neuendorf got his candidate Andreas Rettig through against the resistance of big business in German football. That smells like a deal, but given his previous record, the President of the DFB had little other choice.
“We wish you luck in your future decisions”, Andreas Rettig was quoted in the congratulatory letter that FC Viktoria Köln published on March 11, 2022. Rettig was still managing director of Viktoria at the time, and his congratulations went to Bernd Neuendorf, who had been elected President of the German Football Association (DFB) on March 11th.
Neuendorf was previously president of the Middle Rhine Football Association, to which Viktoria also belongs. Rettig has also been living in Cologne again for several years; 1. FC was one of his clubs as an employer, as was Bayer Leverkusen.
Old acquaintance
In this respect, there is also a lot of photo and text evidence for this, Neuendorf and Rettig have inevitably crossed paths more often. Rettig was, and there is even video evidence of this, also an election campaigner for Neuendorf. He was once switched to the “double pass” of “Sport 1” at morning pint time and exposed Peter Peters, Neuendorf’s opponent nominated by the professionals.
“I would be interested to know what qualifies you, Peter, for the office of president. It couldn’t have been your job at Schalke 04.” That sat. The already pale Peters was responsible for the Gelsenkirchener’s finances for decades and was therefore at least partly responsible for the fact that the cash register was occasionally very tight.
So is it also a bit of gratitude that led to one of the… “future decisions” Neuendorfs is to select Rettig as Sports Director of DFB GmbH & Co. KG, responsible for the national teams and academy areas.
Rummenigge and Mintzlaff leave the task force
The news about the personnel election and the blessing by the responsible committees came as a surprise on Friday (September 15, 2023) and, as expected, caused quite a stir. Oliver Mintzlaff from RB Leipzig did not explicitly mention Rettig’s appointment in a joint statement with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge from FC Bayern as a reason for him to immediately leave Taskforce of the DFB resign. But the deep mistrust became clear in the statement from the Munich supervisory board: “In addition, the task force was not involved in important decisions made by the DFB, and in some cases it was not even informed. We learned from the media about the installation of Andreas Rettig as the DFB’s sports director, a very sensitive personality and decision worthy of discussion. On this basis a trusting cooperation is not possible.”
The “Sensitive personality and decision worth discussing” Rettig has been in professional football for decades and has built up an excellent network there, but he is still considered a representative of small capital.
As managing director of the German Football League (DFL), he said he twice rejected the signature that would grant RB Leipzig a license for the DFL area. However, the licensing committee of the umbrella organization then decided differently. Rettig repeatedly had fights with FC Bayern; he wanted the Munich team to get their money more often in order to distribute it more fairly, so the offended reactions from Mintzlaff and Rummenigge are no surprise.
Representatives of the “little ones”
How did Bernd Neuendorf assert his candidate against big business, which is also represented in German football by Hans-Joachim Watzke, the boss of Borussia Dortmund, head of the DFL supervisory board and therefore Neuendorf’s “vice”?
A DFB press conference on Monday (September 18, 2023) at the association headquarters in Frankfurt am Main promised answers to this question. “I realized that I wasn’t necessarily FC Bayern’s preferred candidate”said Rettig. An attempt on Friday to contact Rummenigge and the still very powerful Uli Hoeneß failed. I’ll have it by Monday “no response” given by FC Bayern, “which we will need in the future”as Rettig emphasized. “We are in crisis. It’s about us all getting along. Personal animosities must not cause us to lose each other”said Rettig, whose contract is valid until December 31, 2026.
Andreas Rettig, 60 years old, is a string puller, but is rarely referred to as such because the term has negative connotations. Rettig orchestrates in the background and his opinion is sought after by many officials. He is eloquent and communicative and has a large network in football and in the media. All of this should help Neuendorf in particular, whose 18-month term in office is marked by a failed appearance at the World Cup in Qatar in every respect, a slippery slope in the assessment of FIFA President Gianni Infantino and the first release of a national coach in the history of the DFB. The composition of the now obsolete Taskforcewhich was convened after the departure of the powerful director Oliver Bierhoff in December, was also viewed critically.
Not the first choice
Neuendorf admitted that Rettig was not the first choice for the position of managing director. He also thought that his life plan looked different than taking up a job in which he would necessarily have to come to terms with Mintzlaff, Bayern and Watzke.
The BVB boss certainly had another preferred candidate. Watzke particularly took offense at Rettig’s string-pulling in rejecting the investor deal, for which the DFL is now making a new attempt in a scaled-down version. Nevertheless, he approved the personnel. In a suitably cool statement distributed by the DFB on Monday, he placed sole responsibility for the selection of personnel on the president: “Without revealing the content of our conversation (with Rettig, editor), I then signaled to Bernd Neuendorf that I agreed with his suggestion.”
It sounds like a deal in which Watzke has already paid, but the consideration still has to be provided. The fact that Rettig is now forced to engage in diplomacy in a high position at the DFB is probably only a small down payment.