2023-09-18 15:42:48
Andreas Rettig chose muted colors to introduce himself to his new employer. Just don’t appear too aggressive on your first real day of work in the service of the German Football Association. The 60-year-old also used a language of reserved diplomacy that does not correspond at all to the nature of the opinionated Rhinelander, but certainly does correspond to that of his new office. There, on the DFB campus in the heart of Frankfurt, the new sports director with a contract until December 31, 2026 had already spent the night in one of the 33 athletes’ rooms. This is exactly where DFB President Bernd Neuendorf spends his night when he is in Frankfurt. For the national players, however, the accommodation is considered too simple.
Maybe you want to spare them what just happened to the new guy: he got lost in the wide-angled house. This shouldn’t happen to him in his job from now on, quite the opposite: Rettig should get the DFB back on track and increase its faded popularity ratings. “He represents a change of perspective that we want here in the DFB,” said Neuendorf at the specially called press conference. The controversial Rettig is known to him for everything that the DFB demands like a prayer wheel: “Courage and courage and openness and willingness to change.”
Rummenigge and Mintzlaff are leaving the DFB task force
Until the day before yesterday, commercialization critic Rettig had dared to mess with just about anyone in the Bundesliga’s nomenklatura. His naming caused correspondingly little enthusiasm in the upper class. Messrs. Rummenigge and Mintzlaff immediately angrily resigned from the DFB task force to save German football, which was founded just nine months ago, in which only Matthias Sammer would have remained after the withdrawal of Oliver Kahn. The committee is therefore a thing of the past.
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It has long been known that the Red Bull-critical Rettig, who would have preferred to deny Leipzig the license to play Bundesliga football at the time, and the dashing RB boss Mintzlaff have a perfectly formed mutual dislike. But things are also difficult with Bayern. They were often angry with him because Rettig notoriously denounced the distribution model of TV money and demanded more money for the small ones to the detriment of the rich.
Rettig reported on Monday that he had tried in vain to reach Rummenigge and Uli Hoeneß by telephone before his personal details were announced last Friday. There was no “response” to either a voicemail message or an SMS. A pretty clear non-verbal message from Bavaria: They don’t value Rettig there.
The well-connected Frankfurt board spokesman Axel Hellmann did not want to comment publicly on Rettig’s personnel when asked, which can at least be seen as an expression of skepticism. Rettig, for his part, wants to talk to both Rummenigge/Hoeneß and Hellmann: “I will approach everyone constructively.” In view of some crisis-like developments, it is important “that everyone who means well for German football” for “good “of the whole” would move forward. “I would be happy if FC Bayern also got involved. We need FC Bayern. I would regret it if we lost important protagonists.” He himself would “tone down a bit” and “take his foot off the gas” verbally. This was indeed unmistakable in the DFB’s packed media room.
DFL supervisory board chairman Hans-Joachim Watzke also plans to bring the chief critic of German professional football and those league managers who recently reacted with anger to the name Rettig closer together again. Watzke said he had known “Andreas Rettig for many years” in an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau. “Our views were the same in some subject areas – for example, our stance on the 50+1 rule. In other subject areas, however, our views were very contradictory. Nevertheless, we never lost the thread of conversation.”
Diplomatic statements by Rettig and Watzke
That sounds just as diplomatic as Rettig’s statements, but Watzke of course knows that everything won’t be that easy. Nevertheless, he had to acknowledge that the amateur camp in the DFB made the majority of decisions, not the Bundesliga players who were outnumbered in the DFB committees. After Neuendorf informed him that he was planning to install Rettig, “I also had a conversation with Mr. Rettig.” This apparently worked out to Watzke’s satisfaction; in any case, “I then signaled to Bernd Neuendorf that I agreed with his suggestion.” You don’t have to be an insider to imagine that Watzke must have made it clear to his colleague Rettig that he expected maximum restraint in all issues affecting the league. Especially when it comes to the investor process that will soon be relaunched in a significantly scaled-down model, which Rettig had successfully fought in recent months.
Rettig made it clear that investors were also “warmly welcome” in German football, “but by our rules,” and he let it be known: “I don’t have a glass chin. I can take it too.”
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