VfL Bochum’s Kaenzig: “A Bundesliga without FC Bayern would get something going”

Contact to 100 possible investors

Ilja Kaenzig, CFO at VfL Bochum, considers the establishment of a Super League with top European clubs worth considering under certain conditions. “We live in a time when people are looking for things in football that they rarely find in normal life because the world is getting crazier and more dramatic. And maybe there will even be a football for the ‘indecent’ and one for the ‘decent’,” said the Swiss in a double interview with his fellow board member Sebastian Schindzielorz on “11Freunde”.

According to Kaenzig, there is “certainly an audience for a Super League who doesn’t care that players cost 100 million euros”. The 48-year-old believes “it would even make sense if the big clubs left the national leagues. A Bundesliga without FC Bayern would get something going.” What is planned for the Super League, on the other hand, “has nothing to do with us anyway.”

Kaenzig, who has worked for VfL since January 2015, does not want a Bundesliga without the record champions from Munich. “Internationally, however, there is a ‘Netflix’ audience that wants to be entertained with a balanced championship fight. In order to achieve a balanced Bundesliga, however, the clubs would have to open up to large investors. That would be the price of high international revenues. If we don’t want that, we’ll have to find another model,” the manager explained. “And I say: It’s possible. Because there are creative solutions that rethink the topic of competitiveness.”

German clubs, and not just VfL Bochum, are too expensive for foreign investors.

Four and a half years ago, the Bochum-based company opened up to a spin-off, but talks with potential financiers have so far always come to nothing. “In the meantime, we’ve had contact with around a hundred potential buyers,” reveals Kaenzig. “These included practically everyone who has recently joined somewhere in Europe.” The board explained why a cooperation has never materialized so far: “German clubs, and that doesn’t just apply to VfL Bochum, are too expensive for foreign investors. They can buy clubs for a fraction of the money in Italy, France or the second division in England, which they then own completely because there is no 50+1 rule.” In addition, the vast majority of investors have a clear plan of what they are doing want – “and it doesn’t necessarily matter what a club stands for”.

VfL Bochum is waiting for the right investor – second smallest budget in the Bundesliga

According to Kaenzig, 90 percent of the interested parties come from America. They, in particular, “consider European football to be inefficient and want to exploit the potential with all their might. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether they do it in Genoa, in Sochaux or Bochum.” According to sports director Schindzielorz, VfL Bochum will reject such a model until the right partner is found. Last summer, VfL Bochum made it back to the Bundesliga after eleven years and is about to stay up in the league with four games to go.

For Kaenzig, the squad planning at the Revierklub has something “of football romance”. “Because we can’t afford the others,” said Schindzielorz, Bochum had to go their own way. In the exemplary case of Konstantinos Stafylidis (28), on loan from TSG Hoffenheim, VfL “wrote a story that can convince another player in the next transfer period (…)”. According to Schindzielorz, such a story “must always work for both sides. It can be a player from your youth who is shown how open VfL is to professional football. Or that we were able to bring a Stafylidis back to the front after problems.”

Kaenzig emphasized that the club had the second smallest budget in the Bundesliga at 24 million euros “and even lower than some second division clubs”. In the medium term you have to achieve a turnover of 100 million euros in order to compete with clubs like Mainz, Freiburg or Augsburg. For the 2021/22 season, Bochum had only strengthened their squad with free transfer players.

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