Former German FA boss Grindel steps down from UEFA and FIFA

Berlin (AFP) – The disgraced former president of the German Football Association Reinhard Grindel said Wednesday he had stepped down from his roles at the European and world football governing bodies UEFA and FIFA.

Eight days after resigning as head of the DFB over a scandal involving a luxury watch Grindel has now given up his positions as a UEFA vice-president and a FIFA council member. 

He said in a statement he had made his decision in order to avoid “blocking FIFA’s path to more transparency” and to “protect the good reputation of UEFA”.

The 57-year old stepped down as DFB president last week after a newspaper report revealed that he had accepted the gift of a watch worth 6,000 euros ($6,700) from Ukrainian Grigori Surkis, a former colleague of Grindel’s on the UEFA executive committee. 

On Wednesday, he insisted that the gift had not influenced any of his decisions as DFB president.

“The media coverage has lost all sense of proportion,” he said. 

“With my late declaration of the acceptance of the gift, I unleashed speculation that I had contravened the rules of good governance.

“But I insist that I did not enter into a conflict of interest as a result of the gift, nor did I make any decision I would not otherwise have made.”

Upon his resignation, Grindel said that he would declare the watch to the compliance departments of both UEFA and FIFA. 

Nonetheless he has been under increasing pressure to give up his posts at both international federations.

In an interview with Deutsche Welle last week, the chairman of the German parliamentary committee on sport, Dagmar Freitag, urged Grindel to resign from the UEFA and FIFA roles.

“Mr Grindel is now effectively sitting on the FIFA and UEFA committees as a private individual,” she said. 

“He holds no position in German football anymore, so (if he stays), German football will have no voice on the international level.”

“That is an intolerable situation.”