As always so often, not much is heard from Peter Peters, although the 58-year-old football official is in the middle of a battlefield.
After the winemaker Fritz Keller resigned from his position as President of the German Football Association, Peters and Rainer Koch temporarily head the largest sports association in the world and thus experience a career highlight.
Especially since the long-standing CFO of FC Schalke 04 was elected in March as Uefa's envoy to the FIFA Council, one of the most powerful bodies in world football. He has also been a member of the management team of the German Football League for years, while his former employer, Schalke 04, has to fight for his future in the second division. Not only in Gelsenkirchen are observers wondering what qualifies Peters for such important tasks in the associations.
“I have a good network,” he once said to the “Sportschau”, possibly already describing one of his most important skills.
On the other hand, almost nothing is known about visions or ideals.
"I would like to make my contribution to ensuring that football remains the most popular sport in the world for women and men and that it provides the right answers to current challenges that are undoubtedly present" is one of Peters' words.
"Still a mystery"
The magazine 11 Freunde once asked: “How is it possible that a man with such abundance of offices and powers is still a mystery after such a long time in professional football, which is illuminated by the media?” Although an unclear profile in sports politics can be a quality feature because it makes it possible to switch to the winning side at any time.
Peters studied business administration and wrote a diploma thesis entitled “Controlling in Football” before applying for a job advertisement at 1. FC Kaiserslautern.
He got the job and moved to Schalke in 1993.
There he took part in a Uefa Cup victory for 27 years, accompanied the construction of the stadium and helped make Schalke a globally known football brand.
That was a great achievement, but it was based on a business model that Christina Rühl-Hamers, his successor, today calls a “bet on the future”.
Without sporting success, there was always a threat of a spiral of decline.
In the end, Peters is said to have seen this type of business more and more critically, but could not prevail against the supervisory board chairman Clemens Tönnies.
He resigned a year ago.
Peters would have liked to run for a position on the Schalke supervisory board, but the election committee did not allow that. In addition to tasks at the DFB and in the controversial Fifa, a position at the district club, which is in ruins, might really be too much for a single person.