adminBERLIN. — Lifting German football out of its current malaise will require plenty of patience and the support of both professional and amateur players alike, Germany’s joint interim FA chief Reinhard Rauball said yesterday.
Rauball and Rainer Koch have been tasked with leading the world’s largest national football association after their predecessor Wolfgang Niersbach resigned on Monday over a World Cup 2006 scandal involving a multi-million dollar payment to soccer’s governing body FIFA a year ahead of the finals.
“The DFB is currently going through a highly problematic situation. So for the good of our sport, together we need to get to work, the Bundesliga as well as the amateurs,” he told Bild newspaper.
“This will take much more time than is expected,” said Rauball, who also heads the German Football League (DFL) that runs the top two divisions.
Last month, Der Spiegel magazine alleged that a 6,7 million euro transfer to soccer’s governing body was a return on a loan from then Adidas CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus to buy votes at a Fifa election in 2000 in favour of Germany’s 2006 World Cup bid.
Niersbach, a vice president of the 2006 organising committee at the time, is under investigation for tax evasion in relation to the payment, but has denied the claims of a slush fund, accepting only “political responsibility”, but insisting he had done nothing wrong. — Reuters.
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