Road to Success

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge is currently a part of a five-man DFB panel alongside Oliver Kahn, Rudi Voller, Oliver Mintzlaff, and Matthias Sammer that’s been constructed in efforts to directly aide Bernd Nuendorf and Hans-Joachim Watzke in strengthening German football in the buildup to Euro 2024. It’s partially been taken as a bit of a knee-jerk response to Germany’s failures at the World Cup in Qatar, but that was just one of many arrows slung through the core of Die Mannschaft that hasn’t yielded a fairly decent return at a major international tournament since Euro 2016 in France, where they went all the way to the semifinals, getting knocked out by Les Bleus.

Rummenigge went as far as saying that he feels Germany should be a bigger focus than Bayern Munich right now, especially amongst the DFB, citing that he feels there’s a slightly underlying sense of embarrassment from German fans towards the national team. He recalled just how much it meant to him to wear the national team kit and hear the anthem prior to kickoff during his playing career and knows that it is a top priority to foot German football back atop the pedestal where it genuinely belongs.

As far as the newly constructed panel is concerned, Rummenigge believes that it will ultimately help yield similar results to those that came about in the early 2000’s, when a similar consultancy panel worked with the DFB. It was a time period that’s been dubbed “Das Reboot,” that eventually led to Germany winning the World Cup in 2014 in Brazil.

“In 2000 I was also a member of the task force with Uli Hoeneß, Rudi Völler and Reiner Calmund. That was the alliance between the Bundesliga and the DFB at the time – and the basis for many successful tournaments,” Rummenigge explained of the previous panel while speaking to Bild (via kicker). He had also said that part of the reason he took on this role in the current panel was to work directly with Hansi Flick, with whom he already has a very solid understanding and relationship with from his time as Bayern manager. It was Rummenigge that was one of the biggest advocates of getting Flick to become the full time manager during the 2019/20 season after Niko Kovac was relieved of his duties. Rummenigge famously gifted Flick with the red pen, making a reference at the time to it being good for signing contracts.

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