Four days before the presidential election at the annual general meeting of VfL Bochum, the group of candidates led by Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Bauer suffered a serious setback.

According to information from RevierSport, the VfL Bochum business council positioned itself behind incumbent president Hans-Peter Villis and his team during a video conference late on Friday afternoon. Volker Goldmann, chairman of the economic council and part of the supervisory board, was tasked with articulating this position. The Economic Council is one of the most important bodies of the club.

VfL Bochum had only announced on Friday noon that the search committee, after a thorough examination, had come to the decision to admit both Dr. Christina Reinhardt as a candidate and Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Bauer, Andreas Bobon, Marcel Maltritz, Marc Schaaf and Ralf Zumdick as candidates for the presidium election for the upcoming general meeting.

VfL Bochum: “Team Villis” competes against “Team Bauer “

This means there are two groups ahead of the presidential election on Tuesday. The freshly strengthened “Team Villis”, consisting of the incumbent president Villis (in office since 2012) as well as Goldmann, Franz-Josef Tenhagen, Dr. Andreas Eichoff, Uwe Tigges and the fan representative Martin Volpers, who has already been elected by the fan clubs.

The opposition around club doctor Dr. Bauer includes former VfL professionals Marcel Maltritz and Ralf Zumdick as well as entrepreneur Andreas Bobon and AWO managing director Marc Schaaf. “We want to take VfL forward by developing and implementing new strategies in an appreciative culture of togetherness in order to put our club in the best possible position,” Bauer said of his application.

Villis explained with regard to the opposition group in an interview with the WAZ: “I was surprised and was also only informed by Dr. Bauer after the official application to the search committee. It irritated me that our club doctor, with whom I have always had a good relationship, is competing with a team. “