Mith every court date another piece of happiness disappears. Hannover 96, the first division club that was quite successful for many years, has long since become a chronically contentious second division club. It takes a tremendous amount of passion and perseverance to be able to really look forward to next Wednesday. DFB-Pokal, second round, kick-off at 6 p.m.: Hannover 96 welcome Borussia Dortmund to a capacity crowd of 49,000.
But what the club tends to make headlines with is an internal dispute over power. Recent highlight: The district court of Hanover confirmed on Tuesday that Martin Kind may remain in office as managing director of Hannover 96 Management GmbH and may not be dismissed by the association’s board of directors. What the court was unable to clarify is the nasty question of whether the 50+1 rule is really still being observed in Hanover under Kind’s regiment.
Actually, it’s time for a poll. Hannover 96 has around 21,000 club members. It would be really good to know how many of them still want to play professional football and the fatal external effects of legal disputes on their club. What many 96 members find difficult to understand in the end: The tough tug of war between the majority shareholder child on the capital side and an honorary board of directors endangers the big picture at Hannover 96.
Who’s in charge?
The 78-year-old entrepreneur insists that financiers should call the shots in professional football. His critics point out that the actual value of Hannover 96 is not due to investors, but to a traditional club founded in 1896 and its sports-loving members. The dismissal of Kind as managing director failed due to formalities. The fact that he remains in office and obviously does not want to come to terms with the decision-making authority of the parent club is a dangerous basis for nationwide explosives.
Carsten Peter Schulze, who was responsible before the regional court, did not want to hide the fact that his clear view as a judge on the confused topic of Hanover 96 was only of limited help. As a functionary, investor and multiple managing director, Kind has wrapped a complex network of companies around an association that is hardly comprehensible.
Martin Kind’s time at Hannover 96 is not over yet.
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Image: dpa
Nevertheless, it can be wonderfully reduced to one crucial question: Who should have the last word in a company that participates in professional football like Hannover 96? The German Football League (DFL), under whose care and control 36 clubs are represented in the first and second leagues, gives the respective parent clubs the necessary decision-making authority. If it turns out, according to a recent statement by the DFL, that the reality lived in Hanover cannot be reconciled with the specifications of the 50+1 rule, then its effectiveness must be re-examined.
How the capital side and the parent association in Hanover actually deal with each other can be seen at the interface called Hannover 96 Management GmbH. In this society, children would have to listen to what the board of directors wants from them and, in case of doubt, should also be able to be dismissed by the supervisory board. The latter should basically never happen due to a stalemate situation in the body.
reason for dismissal
And it is precisely at this point that the so-called Hanover model, which Kind agreed on with the DFL and the parent club in 2019, reveals its sore point. Anyone who wants to do this as a competitor in league one or two and complains that the 50+1 rule is being circumvented in Hanover could, strictly speaking, force a license withdrawal from Hanover 96. The DFL itself could also insist that Kind change something. The parent club has been accusing him for months of violating the club’s board of directors’ unrestricted right to issue instructions to the capital side. That’s exactly why he should be fired as CEO.
In the provincial-looking dispute at Hannover 96 there is a fundamental problem for all of German professional football. This is also indicated by the poison arrow that Kind shot in the direction of the DFL after his victory in court.
The Hanover model
“Corporate law is to be rated higher than association law”: With this sentence in a detailed statement on Tuesday, Kind gets to the heart of what is important to him. From his point of view, the corporation, which was spun off from the parent club in Hanover, adheres to what the DFL statutes stipulate and what the DFL-approved Hanover model regulates.
Practice in Hanover shows that without the last word from the parent club, which has so far had no weight in dialogue with children, the DFL allows another exception to the 50+1 rule in the case of Hanover 96. At Bayer Leverkusen and VfL Wolfsburg as works clubs and TSG Hoffenheim with their patron Dietmar Hopp, it has been tolerated for years that the respective parent clubs have long been just paper tigers.
In Hanover, Kind never made a secret of the fact that he wanted equality in this context. As a remedy against unfair treatment by the DFL, he has a long way to go before the European Court of Justice. Apparently, Kind does not shy away from such legal disputes. He reserves the right to use legal means to enforce that 50+1 fall in Germany and that everything could be completely different.
