Kahn dismisses DFB task force as a "task farce"

Status: 18/09/2023, 22:26 p.m.

By: Frederic Rist

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In December 2022, the DFB set up a task force to deal with the national team's premature World Cup exit. Oliver Kahn thinks this is outdated.

Berlin – Former Bayern boss Oliver Kahn has sharply criticised the DFB's task force, which was launched in December, and considers it outdated. "The task force, which made perfect sense after the embarrassing World Cup in Qatar, developed into a task farce over time," the former chairman of the board of FC Bayern Munich told Sport Bild. When Rudi Völler rightly took over his office (DFB sporting director, editor's note), important decisions were made afterwards largely without the involvement of all members," Kahn continued, who had caused a stir in recent days with a trip to Saudi Arabia. He had recently no longer found his involvement in the task force to be expedient.

Rummenigge and Mintzlaff resign: Criticism of lack of involvement in important DFB decisions

Last Sunday, FC Bayern supervisory board member Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and RB Leipzig chairman Oliver Mintzlaff announced their resignation from the DFB task force. Rummenigge criticised the fact that the task force had not been involved in important decisions of the DFB and in some cases had not even been informed. As an example, he cited, among other things, the installation by Andreas Rettig. He was officially presented on Monday as the new managing director of sport of the DFB.

After the embarrassing elimination of the German national team from the preliminary round at the World Cup in Qatar last year, the task force was set up by the DFB. The aim was to stop the downward trend of the national team and the federation with a view to the home European Championship in 2024. In addition, a successor for DFB managing director Oliver Bierhoff, who resigned after the World Cup, was to be found.

Bayern's ex-chairman Oliver Kahn feels that the DFB task force is outdated. © IMAGO/Mladen Lackovic

The number of members continues to shrink

In addition to Kahn, Rummenigge, Mintzlaff and Völler, the former European champion Matthias Sammer and the managing director of Borussia Dortmund, Hans-Joachim Watzke, were also among the members of this body. On Monday, DFB President Bernd Neuendorf underlined that the task force had never had the authority to make decisions – rather, it was convened as an advisory body. According to the statutes of the DFB, concrete measures are the responsibility of the responsible DFB committees.