Three Titles for One Man: The Real Hole in the DFB Is Not Marc Kosicke

In the same week, three official sources of German football describe the same man with three different titles. DFB president Bernd Neuendorf calls Marc Kosicke an "external employee". The DFB's own statement calls him an "external adviser". And Jürgen Klopp, the man who brought him in, calls him an "assistant coach for strategy, development and innovation". Three titles. One person. None matching the others. I read those three quotes four times — not because I didn't understand them, but because I understood exactly what they say. When three authorities describe one role in three different ways, that's not a semantic dispute. It is proof no document has ever defined that role. When a national federation cannot write a single job description for the head coach's adviser, the problem is not the man sitting in that seat — the problem is that the process broke before he walked through the door. This is a story the German media has framed incorrectly, and the evidence sits inside the very documents they cite. To understand why this matters, look at the structure. Kosicke is no random name. He has been attached to Klopp since the early 2000s, when both worked inside Nike's system. That is a relationship of more than twenty years, built on trips, contracts and late nights in hotels no camera ever filmed. When Klopp took the Germany job, he brought Kosicke along, straight into the DFB machinery. Picture the organisational culture here. A national federation is not a club. It has no billionaire owner able to decide in one boardroom sentence. It has a supervisory board, an executive, protocols, conflict-of-interest statutes. Every senior appointment must clear an auditable process. That is why procedures exist — not to slow the work, but to protect the institution from its own leadership while they are euphoric. So what happened? According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung investigation, the supervisory board "received no detailed information about Kosicke's exact responsibilities". Many inside the DFB "remain unclear about what Kosicke actually does". His role in official documents "is not clearly defined". And most importantly: a company called Projekt b, founded and run by Kosicke, which manages sporting directors and coaches, was allegedly never disclosed to the DFB. Alongside it sits Onside Sports GmbH, a company organising friendlies and training camps, where Kosicke still holds shares. And projectFIVE, a marketing agency he says he has held "no shares in for a year and a half". Uli Hoeneß, Bayern Munich's most powerful voice, called this a "friendly takeover". The German press calls Kosicke a "problem figure". Klopp shot back with one line: "People judge things before we've done anything at all." I have tracked federation governance structures in Europe for nine years, and this narrative makes my skin itch. Here is the analysis. To do it properly, we must separate two problems the German media is blending together. The first — and the loudest — is that Kosicke holds business interests overlapping with DFB operations. That is structurally grounded, but legally empty. Onside Sports organises friendlies and training camps. The DFB also organises friendlies. When an adviser to a national head coach also holds equity in a business selling exactly that service, you have a latent conflict channel. Not because he did anything wrong, but because his motives and his position can no longer be separated. Projekt b is even more sensitive. It manages sporting directors and coaches. The DFB is a major employer in that very market. If Kosicke advises the man running the national team while representing coaches and directors in the same market, he could, in theory, become a broker between DFB hiring decisions and his own client pool. That is not an accusation. It is structural arithmetic. The second problem — the one I consider graver — is the existence of an undefined role inside an institution that must run on definitions. The difference matters. A defined role held by someone with overlapping interests is a manageable problem. An undefined role is a hole into which every other problem drains. Notice this. All three titles — "external employee", "external adviser", "assistant coach for strategy, development and innovation" — sit outside any DFB org chart. "Assistant coach" is a real DFB title, but it attaches to pitch-side coaching, tactical work, training plans. "Strategy, development and innovation" is boardroom language, not dressing-room language. Glued together, they create a title that belongs to no one. And a title belonging to no one belongs to everyone. Its holder can do anything — or nothing — without being bound by an accountable remit. That is why the title is more dangerous than Kosicke's business interests themselves. Compare against baseline governance. In a listed German company, when a new executive wants to import a trusted ally into the board, German stock corporation law requires certain steps: define the title and authority in writing, disclose relevant interests, and where conflict exists, require recusal from specific decisions. None of these — as far as has been published — fully occurred for Kosicke. He has access "all the way up to the presidential office" by the sources' own account, yet no document defines what he can decide. Let me be clear: the problem is not that Kosicke did wrong. The problem is that the door was opened before anyone could write a nameplate for it. Once the door is open, everything passing through becomes the responsibility of the one who opened it, not the one who walks through. This brings us to a point few raise. The DFB allowed an outsider into its governance structure without ordinary vetting, and without a job definition. What does that say about the DFB? It says the federation traded structural control to sign one of the most sought-after coaches in the world. Jürgen Klopp was not hired as just a coach. He was hired as a package — and the package included the right to bring his confidant without being questioned. I understand the logic. When you are desperate after several disappointing World Cups, and Klopp becomes available, you nod at almost every request. That is institutional instinct. But institutional instinct is not institutional governance. The gap between those two is where this story lives. When the stands are empty, the match begins to speak its true voice. Here, the "empty stands" are the weeks before Germany's first competitive match under Klopp. No pitch results to drown out off-pitch noise. And with no results, the only material left to discuss is structure. The structure Kosicke stands in — under three definitions — says the DFB was not ready for this. One more narrative note. His defenders say: his companies are legal, he broke no law. True. But a national federation's standard is not criminal law. It is transparency. And while no one can prove Kosicke did anything wrong, several are saying the existence of those companies was never disclosed to the supervisory board. That is the hinge: the problem is not overlapping interests — it is overlapping interests left unspoken. The thing everyone believes in football is that "a coach's confidant is always good news". I do not believe it. A confidant is good news in a governance-mature institution, where friendship and process coexist. A confidant is bad news in a governance-immature institution, where friendship replaces process. The only question needed to know which DFB is this: has the role been written down? By all three sources, the answer is no. Now the part where I might be wrong. The counter-hypothesis: the DFB knew everything, acted deliberately, and there is no governance problem at all — only a media war inflated by people who want Neuendorf gone. In that scenario, "title ambiguity" is not process failure but intent. Leaving Kosicke undefined lets him move freely without formal accountability — good for him and Klopp. And the supervisory board's silence is not because it was bypassed, but because it tacitly agreed and preferred not to know details. I cannot fully refute this with what I hold. But three details weigh against it. First, Klopp's rebuttal — "people judge before we've done anything" — is not the language of a man in control. It is defensive. Defensive reactions rarely come from control. Second, Kosicke's voluntary disclosure that he left projectFIVE "a year and a half ago" is a weak signal. It is selective presentation: he names the light detail — the marketing agency — while still holding Onside Sports shares and still running Projekt b. Someone in good control of information has no need to be selective. Someone reacting to pressure does. Third, and structurally the most important: if the DFB truly had a deliberate behind-doors arrangement, there would not be three different titles. A deliberate arrangement demands a formal structure. Three titles prove the opposite: nobody wrote anything, and each person spoke from their own understanding while questioned. Where am I wrong? I am wrong if the DFB supervisory board publishes a document proving it was fully informed in advance. I am wrong if Projekt b is fully severed from DFB personnel decisions. And I am wrong if Onside Sports has nothing to do with any Germany-related friendly programme. All three are verifiable — and precisely because they are verifiable, I am placing the bet. My prediction: within six to eight months, before Germany plays its first meaningful competitive match, Kosicke's role will be written into an official document — with a formal definition, a disclosure commitment, and a recusal protocol for decisions touching Projekt b clients. No one gets sacked. No one gets charged. But the door will finally carry a clear nameplate. Here is what I want to leave behind. Football teaches us to judge a player by what he does on the pitch. But football's governance happens off it, where mistakes have no result to cover them. Marc Kosicke may be entirely right inside an entirely wrong structure. In that case, the question is not whether Kosicke is a "problem figure". The question is: what does a national federation need in order to define its own positions before some individual walks into them? I do not trust my eyes; I trust what the eyes cannot see. And what my eyes cannot see across this whole story is a document. There is none. That is the worst news of all.