In July, MSV Duisburg’s Annual General Meeting awaits, including the opportunity to elect a new Board of Directors. The opposition to Ingo Wald has presented itself.

At squad level, there are new developments almost daily at MSV Duisburg, who were relegated from the third division. The team around Michael Preetz has been working at full speed for weeks to realize the mission of regaining promotion in the new season under coach Dietmar Hirsch.

There could also be some changes at board level in the course of the annual general meeting on July 23, 2024. After relegation was confirmed, the current MSV board addressed the fans and signaled that the new start in the regional league could also entail a new start at board level.

As part of a press event on June 11, the opposition called “MSV-Zukunft” (MSV Future), who have already submitted their candidacy to MSV, presented themselves. The driving forces behind this group are Thomas Maaßen, Kai-Uwe Otto, Jörg Dahms and Andreas Tappe, who was the Zebras’ athletics coach from 2014 until the winter of 2019.

The areas of responsibility of the individual members have already been clearly allocated. Maaßen will act as president, Tappe will essentially take care of the youth training center and social media work, while Dahms will be the man for IT and marketing. Otto will largely be responsible for member support. “Basically, we will work very much as a team,” says Maaßen.

With the exception of Dahms, who has also had contact with MSV Duisburg in the course of his life, all team members have strong roots in Duisburg. Therefore, one of the group’s main focuses is to bring the club more clearly into the city. The keyword: visibility.

“We want to become more visible as an association, as a board – also by being present at events. You simply have to go through the mill of public relations work and we stand for this happening in person,” explained the chosen President Maaßen. MSV’s membership figures are another issue that the board candidate would like to tackle.

“With 8600 members and counting, we have rather modest membership figures. As a city, we have over 500,000 inhabitants; if you include the immediate surroundings in the Lower Rhine region, where our stadium is closest, then even over a million. If just two percent of these people were to become members of MSV, we would have 20,000 members and that will be one of our goals during our time in office,” explains Maassen.

Of course, this is also linked to the sporting aspect, because “success on the pitch always helps,” says Maaßen. “We will have that in the new year,” he promises. At the same time, however, Maaßen also points out that the last big boost in membership figures was recorded shortly after the team was relegated in 2013. “The sporting success then was also shit.”

Admittedly, this is still an optimistic goal – as Maaßen himself acknowledges. In order to achieve this, the 64-year-old has announced talks with the fans to find out what is possible and what needs to be done to get closer to this goal. Tappe emphasizes the importance of dialogue: “It is incredibly important to us that we work together with the fans, the existing players, to develop paths, define goals and implement them together in order to integrate MSV into this city. We want MSV to take place in the entire city, because MSV plays for everyone in Duisburg. “