After years of turmoil and several failed new beginnings, the German Football Association (DFB) is hoping for a less erratic course under new President Bernd Neuendorf.
After winning Friday’s election with 193 of the 250 votes cast in the former West German capital, Bonn, the 60-year-old spoke of a time of “cultural change and renewal” and of football “embracing its social and political responsibilities again”. . . “
A former Rhineland-based journalist and civil servant and president of the local MittelrheinFA in West Germany, Neuendorf has a long list of responsibilities, including repairing an image tarnished by allegations of corruption, improving his DFB connection with the diversity in leadership positions. .
However, the need for more action to accompany the whole debate around positive change is great, especially with regard to women and diversity. The DFB on Friday elected three new women to its board, which now has four in total with Donata Hopfen, the new CEO of the German Football Association (DFL), retaining her position.
Celia Sasic, a former German forward, has taken on the new role of vice-president for diversity and equality. Sabine Mammitzsch replaces the legendary Hannelore Ratzeburg as vice president for women and girls football. Dr. Silke Sinning, a former player and coach who has been involved in managing the women’s game in southern Germany, won a surprise victory over interim president Rainer Koch.
The new appointments embody a significant change for the FA, but only time will tell if this is the moment it feels like today.
Sasic’s new role at the top
Sasic, who won two euros with Germany, as well as a 2015 Champions League winner with FFC Frankfurt, began working as an integration ambassador for the DFB during her 2010 career.
Her appointment to a new role as head of diversity is an open recognition that this job requires a greater focus — in the past, Ratzeburg was vice president of both diversity and women’s football — and that the world’s largest sports association must finally take steps to represent everyone in his country.
“I want to be part of the change,” Sasic told a news conference Friday. “I myself was able to experience the power of football first hand and I want to continue to use that power for society. We must strengthen the common good and strengthen the great issues of this age, such as the common good, sustainability and diversity. “
This is part of the change that the new president of the DFB Neuendorf wants, who stressed again on Friday that it was time for the German FA to start approaching other organizations in terms of equality and diversity.
“We have become younger. We have become more women. These are all very important signs,” the new DFB president said on Friday. “And that makes me proud and allows me to look to the future with confidence and great pleasure.”
His words were positive and the appointment of the former Germany striker to the world’s biggest sports club is a promising step, but it remains worrying that, in the 122 years of the DFB, Sasic is only one of five women to have never. the DFB table.
In addition, it is striking that the women candidates felt that they could not enter the race for the top spot because victory was virtually impossible. As Katja Kraus of the Women’s Initiative Fussball kann mehr (Football can do more) said in a recent interview with DW: approaches”.
Traffic is the key
Ratzenburg, who received the appropriate expulsion and was awarded an honorary membership after decades of developing the female game in Germany, even mocked in her farewell speech that much more work needed to be done.
“Forty-five years in the DFB is a lot,” Ratzeburg said. “It was not always easy, but I always enjoyed it. Football has to do with movement, not only on the pitch but also in the presidency.”
Sasic’s arrival is a start, but as Thomas Weikert, head of the German Olympic Committee, said, that should be the beginning, not the moment.
“We need to do more to remove barriers for women in sports,” Weikert said on the podium in Bonn. “Sport is the mirror of society. Under-representation in politics and society is present. Let sport set a good example.”
The hope is that the DFB and this new board under Neuendorf will finally make a tangible change.
Edited by Davis VanOpdorp
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