The news that VfB Stuttgart announced on Tuesday will likely keep several thousand fans and members busy for some time to come, at least as much as the positive sporting situation for the third-place team. Fans and members of both camps, mind you, because when it came to club politics, there was recently only agreement in the VfB environment that there was no agreement.
Under the harmless headline “The supervisory board is reorganizing itself” In any case, one read in the club’s announcement that the president of the registered club (eV), Claus Vogt, was voted out as chairman of the supervisory board of the spun-off professional football operating company. The former CDU state minister and managing director of the Federal Association of German Industry, Tanja Gönner, was elected in his place. And this with the support of the investor representatives on the supervisory board of the two automobile companies Mercedes and Porsche. Both have held four of the eleven seats since VfB sold shares worth 41.5 million euros to Porsche and the supervisory board was expanded to include two Porsche representatives.
There must have been eV representatives who voted against Vogt and for Tanja Gönner
This constellation, along with the corresponding voting behavior, is also the political issue in Vogt’s deselection. Finally, one can ask how the clubs are dealing with the essence of the 50+1 rule, which the DFL has declared in recent weeks to be a valuable unique selling point in the industry. In any case, the investors have now prevailed at VfB, who together have just over 20 percent of the shares. Accordingly, it is said that in the heated debate there was great outrage among those representatives of the registered association who were defeated in the vote. However, there must also have been eV representatives who voted against Vogt and for Tanja Gönner.
Patron, who was actually appointed as a mediator, should now not be approved by a general meeting. According to information from the broadcaster Sky, the association’s advisory board had previously requested that the members be surveyed before the chairmanship of the supervisory board and the office of president were separated. Vogt, however, was alone with only one other supporter at the supervisory board meeting on February 29th when he voted in favor of consulting the members. This is tricky because when the professional department was spun off in 2017, the members were promised by the club’s president at the time, Wolfgang Dietrich, that the president of the eV would always automatically head the AG’s supervisory board. However, this is not enshrined in the statutes.
When it comes to the question of why this was omitted, there are different versions at VfB – as is the case with almost every question at this incredibly divided club. Version A says that the eV website simply messed it up. Version B is that Vogt was ultimately quite isolated in his efforts to involve the members and was ultimately unable to assert himself. Two representations are also circulating on another question: Vogt’s opponents claim that Vogt signed a declaration according to which he would voluntarily resign from the position of head of the supervisory board if Porsche joined. His camp, however, says that this assurance was given with the addition that this only applies under the condition that the members give their consent to the council chairman.
The statement that VfB sent reads in part like a slap in the face for Vogt
In addition, the conflict, which ended on Tuesday with Vogt’s deselection, also has an interpersonal component: both camps have apparently tried in recent years to enforce their positions using procedural tricks such as changing agendas at short notice. The accusation that Vogt is heard every now and then that he is a weak leader and conducts meetings in a “chaotic” manner is probably precisely due to this. The conflict between Vogt and Thomas Hitzlsperger, who resigned as VfB board member in 2022, is also having an impact. Since Porsche’s entry, the pressure on Vogt had steadily increased. The Böblingen entrepreneur is not suspected of anti-capitalist activities, but has repeatedly urged members within the club to participate. And that is certainly in his own interest, after all, Vogt has the support there that he clearly lost on the Supervisory Board recently, as documented by the vote on Tuesday.
The statement that VfB sent reads in part like a slap in the face for Vogt. Patron was elected “in order to be able to professionally accompany, control and promote the board’s work,” it is said, for example. Which, conversely, can be understood to mean that Vogt was not able to do that.
Even a patron statement that can be read there is unlikely to break the polarization. That she is “of the opinion together with the supervisory board members of our partners Mercedes-Benz and Porsche” that in the future “the ideal person for the chairman of the supervisory board should be a member of the association’s executive committee who was directly elected by the members and has the necessary professional and personal qualifications.” , one can read that Vogt obviously did not have these “professional and personal requirements”.
In general, there are many indications that the bitter dispute that has been going on behind the scenes at VfB for a long time will not end with Vogt’s deselection. By the way, the football team is still in third place.