By Andrew Warshaw
April 18 – Reinhard Grindel, the only candidate for a job that has become something of a poisoned chalice, has officially taken over as head of the German football association (DFB), the sport’s biggest single federation.
Grindel succeeded Wolfgang Niersbach, who was forced to quit in November in the wake of the damaging slush fund allegations with regard to Germany’s winning 2006 World Cup bid.
Grindel, who moves up from treasurer, is a television journalist turned politician and now has the task of restoring faith in the reputation of Germany’s football leadership. He will apparently give up his role as a member of parliament in the German Bundestag to avoid any conflict of interest at the DFB.
Both Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger, his two predecessors, are under investigation for suspected tax evasion. Just as alarmingly, Franz Beckenbauer, the country’s most iconic sporting figurehead, has found himself embroiled in an official FIFA inquiry into the hosting of the 2006 World Cup.
FIFA’s ethics committee is investigating Beckenbauer, who headed Germany’s 2006 bid and organising team, and five other senior officials, including Niersbach and Zwanziger, over their roles in a possible vote-buying scandal first revealed by Der Spiegel magazine.
Ethics prosecutors, acting amid rising suspicion of wrongdoing linked to the winning of hosting rights, said that in the case of Beckenbauer and three of the others, investigators would be looking into “possible undue payments and contracts to gain an advantage in the 2006 World Cup host selection and the associated funding.”
The entire affair was prompted by a €6.7 million payment alleged to have been a secret slush fund to buy votes but which German authorities insist was a return of a loan from former Adidas owner Louis-Dreyfus. Germany ended up winning the ballot for 2006 hosting by a single vote over South Africa.
One of Grindel’s goals is to bring the 2024 European Championships to Germany but to do this, he conceded, any remaining 2006 skeletons would need to be dealt with “thoroughly and sustainably… in order to be able to apply for this tournament with UEFA with renewed integrity.”
“We have the stadiums, we have the infrastructure, we don’t need a single extra hectare of land, and we don’t need a mammoth budget to host Euro 2024.”
Last month Grindel told Insideworldfootball that there was no evidence that bribes were paid to secure the 2006 World Cup but that his priority would be to restore German football’s battered reputation.
“We will be the first federation to set up its own ethics committee to make sure nothing like this crisis happens again and have total transparency,” he said at the time. “The only thing I can do is look forward and rebuild trust.”
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