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The new DFB President Bernd Neuendorf and Rainer Koch (right)
Photo:
Federico Gambarini / dpa
The longtime top football official Rainer Koch explained his withdrawal from the presidency of the Bavarian Association mainly with the "campaign against me" at DFB level.
The 63-year-old lawyer did not run again after 18 years at the BFV association day in Bad Gögging - as he originally planned - for the top office in the largest state association of the German Football Association (DFB).
After his failed re-election as Vice President at the DFB Bundestag in March, it was clear to him "in the same second" that he had to act in the interests of the BFV.
But he is now retiring "very relaxed" from the front row of football, the lawyer assured: "I'm not retiring from life, but from office."
The three-time interim president and Koch, who has become increasingly controversial in the chaos of the past few years, formulated a tip against his opponents in the DFB: "I don't miss everything and everyone I've dealt with in recent years."
He always had the interests of amateur football and Bavaria in mind.
»Yes, I was and am a combative person.
Am I controversial about that?” said Koch.
He originally wanted to run again as BFV president in order to be able to help shape the home European Championship 2024 with the venue in Munich, as he admitted.
In the coming year he will also prematurely vacate the lucrative post on the Uefa Executive Committee.
In the top committee of the European umbrella organization, he was never "about personal sinecures," as envious people would have accused him of.
"There should also be a real representative of amateur football at the Uefa table," said Koch.
He will be succeeded as DFB representative by Hans-Joachim Watzke (63), the head of the DFL supervisory board and managing director of the professional club Borussia Dortmund.
ara/dpa
