April 29 – Just when you thought the administration of German football had cleaned up its act after a series of scandals in recent years, it is back in the news for all the wrong reasons with the president of the DFB Fritz Keller publicly apologising for making a Nazi reference.
Keller (pictured) is under pressure to resign after comparing one of his DFB colleagues with infamous Nazi judge Roland Freisler and has admitted he made a “serious mistake”.
Keller referred to DFB vice president Rainer Koch, himself a civil judge, as “Freisler,” who was a participant at the 1942 Wannsee Conference where the Nazis laid out their “final solution” plan to exterminate the Jews.
“With my remark during the board meeting last Friday towards my first vice president Rainer Koch I committed a grave mistake,” Keller said in a statement on Tuesday. “I assumed that he would accept my apology, which I offered both in writing and by phone.”
Keller took over the DFB in September 2019, after Reinhard Grindel was forced to step down following in the footsteps of Wolfgang Niersbach and Theo Zwanziger. His remarks were all the more unfortunate since Koch sits on the UEFA executive committee.
Grindel was forced out after accepting a luxury watch amid allegations of undeclared earnings and general discontent with his leadership. Niersbach and Zwanziger were forced to quit amid allegations of corruption concerning Germany’s 2006 World Cup bid.
Yet despite widespread criticism, including from within the federation itself, Keller, who was seen as the best candidate to help the DFB emerge from years of scandal, refused to go the same way as his predecessors, saying he “rules out resigning.”
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