WSV Blog: Insolvency achieved!

Things finally got cleared up, and Wuppertaler SV is officially in insolvency proceedings. In an perverse sort of way, this is actually a good thing.

As you might recall, dissidents launched the “WSV Initiative 2.0” campaign to take over the management of the club, and it was overwhelmingly approved. Key point (aside from dumping all the ruling Politburo puppets of the ringmaster in charge) was to take the club into administration and wipe out the debts, but thereby get forcibly relegated to start over. Another good point was to drop the name “Borussia”, which had been forced upon WSV as part of the ill-thought merger with Borussia Wuppertal. (BTW, some good news in that some of the old Borussia members are now trying to re-establish their club, good luck to them.)

One of the key aspects was to achieve formal court recognition of insolvency by June 30. This was important, since it means that WSV starts the coming season in the 5th division Oberliga Nordrhein. If the court had delayed, then WSV would have actually had to continue in the 4th division and then basically have all matches annulled and get forcibly relegated, meaning the loss of a whole season.

Most of the players have been released from contract, although some promising new ones have signed up. With an expected budget of only 850,000 euros, the full professional contracts are no longer feasible. (The Regionalliga budgets were usually around 3.5-4.0 million). The WSV-II squad of U23s will backfill several players. WSV-II did reasonably well, finishing 7th in the Oberliga. (They get automatically dropped to the Verbandsliga with the main team relegation).

Training for the new season has started, and the first scrimmage/friendly against Regionalliga side SC Verl actually drew 400+ fans, which is pretty decent for this time of year. The WSV team was mostly made up of U23 players. The match ended 0-0, which is actually an improvement, since WSV got bitch-slapped 4-1 by the same Verl squad on the last day of the just finished Regionalliga season.

5 thoughts on “WSV Blog: Insolvency achieved!

  1. This must be the first time I’ve seen someone celebrate going bust! 😉

    Is good that some people are trying to reform Borussia as well.

    I’ve also heard that Duisburg are dropping to the regionalliga and Offenbach are currently without a league due to their own problems, any thougjts?

    • Yeah, but it makes sense in the greater context. Wuppertal was going into administration or bust, regardless. The courts agreeing not only means that the club is “saved”, but the timing means that the plan of re-starting in the Oberliga is solid. If the courts had delayed, WSV would have had to start in the Regionalliga, then go into administration and lose a whole year. Plus you piss off all the other clubs, since your results are annulled. And if you’re really unlucky, you still have to play your games. This happened to Dynamo Berlin a few years ago. They declared insolvency, but all the clubs were so pissed off, the league made them play out the season as forced “friendlies”. So East Germany’s most hated club basically showed up with a youth team (they had already let all their seniors go) and the other teams had the perverse pleasure of beating hated Dynamo by scores of 10-0, 16-0, etc. every weekend.

      For Offenbach, they’re basically being punished for continued stupidity, lying to the committee etc. They should be strong enough to bounce back quickly, and the Regionalliga SW has some pretty attractive fixtures. For MSV Duisburg, it’s more complicated. There is some question whether they will even get the 3.Liga license, but the last I heard is that at least the Regionalliga West has agreed to accept them if they fall down there (the league would expand). It looks like the leagues and federation are taking a harder line on financial shenanigans. Maybe it’s a side-effect of the EU Cyprus/Greece/Portugal crisis…

      • It does make a lot of sense, losing a season would not help the recovery at all.

        If Duisburg does drop into the Regionalliga west, with Uerdingen and Wattenscheid coming up, that makes for an interesting Bundesliga reunion, along with RW ESsen and Fortuna Köln!

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