After the dismissal of long-time club boss Martin Kind, Hannover 96 is facing what is probably the toughest test in an already turbulent club history.
There is a risk of a legal dispute between the outsourced professional football area and the large popular sports club. Because Kind doubts the legality of his dismissal as managing director of Hannover 96 Management GmbH and is now having it legally examined.
Rettig is being discussed as a successor
While Kind and his co-partners are consulting with their lawyers, his opponents at the head of the parent association Hannover 96 e.V. have long been trying to organize the hearing aid entrepreneur’s successor. According to information from the “Bild” newspaper, the supervisory board and former 96 captain Carsten Linke could take over on an interim basis. A candidate for a permanent solution is the experienced manager Andreas Rettig, who has worked in German football for FC St. Pauli, FC Augsburg and SC Freiburg, among others, and has also been available since leaving third division club Viktoria Köln in May. The “Neue Presse” had first reported on it.
Rettig even admitted several contacts with the 96ers in the past two weeks – however, he spoke to the child and not to the e.V. President Sebastian Kramer. “I appreciate Martin Kind very much. For me, Hannover 96 is very closely linked to Martin Kind and his shareholders,” said Rettig of the German Press Agency. “But neither Martin Kind nor the club offered me a succession plan.”
The agreement on a managing director candidate is possibly the only chance for the ambitious promotion candidate of the 2nd Bundesliga to get out of this escalation without lasting damage. Rettig is closely connected to Ralf Nestler, head of the e.V. However, the 59-year-old has no fundamental problem with investors, which is why he has already worked closely with patrons Walther Seinsch and Franz-Josef Wernze at FC Augsburg and Viktoria Köln.
Hanover has a very complicated structure
However, the inability of both camps to agree on such a common candidate for more than two years is one of the reasons why the conflict escalated on Wednesday evening. And in addition to the deep rifts between the capital and the club side, Hannover 96 has an extremely complicated structure.
The professional football KGaA is 100 percent owned by Hannover 96 Sales
On the other hand, the 50 1 rule in German football stipulates that the parent club must always have the majority of votes in an outsourced corporation. And that is why the managing directors of the KGaA at 96 are appointed by a management GmbH, which in turn is 100 percent owned by Hannover 96 e.V.
Child wants to take legal action
That is the reason why the club side, which has been dominated by child opponents since 2019, believed that they could recall the managing director of Management GmbH and KGaA. Kind, in turn, argues: According to the statutes, only the Supervisory Board of Management GmbH, which consists of two representatives each from the capital and association side, is allowed to do this and was not informed about the decision on Wednesday evening. The supervisory board member Roland Frobel confirmed this at t-online.de.
Therefore, the 78-year-old child is now considering legal steps and also refers to another special feature of this club: the so-called 96 contract from 2019, which essentially regulates two things: the ailing parent club stays out of professional football and in return is out co-financed his million dollar business. This contract was obviously broken by Kind’s dismissal, which is why Kind’s confidante and 96 record scorer Dieter Schatzschneider grumbled: “If this board now takes over the professionals, it will be the end of professional football at Hannover 96.”
