Struggle for power and failure at the DFB

ISA free-falling national team and a youth training program on the ground mark a major crisis in German football at the end of 2020. However, the two pain points are not the cause of the crisis. They are symptoms. The central problem of evil is elsewhere: in the German Football Association (DFB). More precisely, in an association that has become a dysfunctional organization in recent years.

A DFB leadership that has detached itself from the grassroots and has expanded its areas of power and at the same time delimited from each other is not up to its duties. When one looks at the DFB, the outcome and consequences if responsible leadership is neglected for years are now evident: self-inflicted inability to act. A family of dysfunctional footballers in which everyone is close to themselves and takes possession of what they can get.

What sounds abstract is regularly revealed in everyday football. The “Fall Löw”, which is shaking the heads of fans everywhere these days, is just one example of this malaise. It is an almost exemplary example of the systemic failure of a once respected and sometimes even feared institution to which 7.2 million people give their power. At the end of the “fall of Löw”, President Fritz Keller could be overthrown. Or his retirement. That would be the fifth DFB president to have survived the national team coach. The decline of the DFB seems unstoppable.

“Fall Löw” on different levels

You must know that the “fall of Löw” takes place on several levels. This is the only way to understand that the people involved (in this case also the non-actors) in the DFB after the 6-0 against Spain are not just about the future of the national team. Some not even primarily. Rather, the “Löw case” must be understood as part of a DFB power struggle, otherwise it will not be understood. And neither is its result.

The origin of the current DFB crisis dates back to the past. To the millions of unresolved payments around the 2006 World Cup prizes. Since the poisoned legacy of Emperor Francis went public about five years ago, the association has plunged from one crisis to the next. Yesterday’s tricks still have serious financial consequences today: the double-digit millions incurred to deal with the World Cup scandal and threatened with tax damage, have also drastically reduced the DFB’s leeway when it comes to costly personnel matters, such as that of the national coach. The summer fairy tale and its old ghosts are the beginning of everything.

First, then DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach fell during the investigation because he didn’t want to explain. The representatives of the amateurs took the opportunity and pushed Reinhard Grindel to the presidency. The overwhelmed successor fell on an expensive watch that he received as a gift, the existence of which was known in the DFB. The gift was only pierced by the media when it seemed appropriate to some people in the DFB. After the fall of Grindel, prominent figures in associations such as Secretary General Friedrich Curtius, Vice President Rainer Koch, Oliver Bierhoff and Christian Seifert secured their areas of power and sought to further increase their influence.