Whatever the Mönchengladbach club members wanted, it wasn't Stefan Effenberg and his "Initiative Borussia."

The midfielder, who served Gladbach as a player for four seasons from 1994 to 1998, had planned to depose President Rolf Königs and sporting director Max Eberl by popular vote at Sunday's annual general meeting. In their place, Effenberg had hoped to install former coach Horst Köppel as president and himself as sporting director.

A radical removal of a club's leadership would have been a putsch unprecedented in the history of the Bundesliga. But it wasn't to be. Effenberg's initiative brought exactly 335 votes from a total of 4,769 present members, a long way from the two-thirds majority he needed.

Raucous atmosphere

Houdini would have been proud of Gladbach's relegation escape

Effenberg himself was not even around to hear the result - he had already fled the stadium with chants of "You can go home" from the more raucous members ringing in his ears.

"I got a very good idea of the atmosphere, and saw clearly that members don't want change," he told the popular German tabloid Bild later. "I accept that. I deliberately decided against making a public statement, because I didn't want to pour gas on the fire. I wish the club all the best on the pitch."

The atmosphere at the club's AGM was certainly not conducive to Effenberg's intervention, with boos ringing out at the packed out meeting every time his name was mentioned.

"Stefan was supposed to give an emotional speech," said his spokesman Norbert Kox afterwards. "In the circumstances, I asked him not to do it. I don't see why he has to be burnt alive here. He left the stadium at my request."

Evolution, not revolution

Effenberg's takeover campaign was set up late last year as a consequence of Gladbach's rapidly imploding season. Rooted to the bottom of the table with only 10 points at Christmas, it was only the appointment of Swiss coach Lucien Favre in February that brought them back from the brink.

Few pundits gave Favre a hope in hell when he took over - his last appearance on the coaching circuit ended in September 2009 when he was sacked by Hertha Berlin after six straight defeats - but on Sunday he was celebrated as a conquering warrior for helping the team to avoid disaster.

Gladbach's skin-of-the-teeth draw with Bochum in the relegation playoff last week took the wind out of Effenberg's sails. As Köppel admitted, "The other side had better arguments after the club survived."

And the revolutionary cause was not helped when several of the club's sponsors took out a newspaper ad ahead of the AGM which read, "We want the further development of the club, but with purpose and reason. Borussia doesn't need a revolution."

Favre is one of the few to come out of the Gladbach saga with much credit

The tiger roars

It all looked different a month ago, when Effenberg presented his team and Gladbach were staring down the barrel. The man who was nicknamed "Tiger" back in his playing days declared, "My name and my personality stand for strength and success. Something desperately needs to change. I'm making good on my promise to help Borussia. It's now or never."





Even though he did admit, on questioning, that he had no experience running a football club, he said, "I have a lot of good friends in the sporting and business areas, who I am in contact with." He added that he had "90 percent support from the fans," a claim that was somewhat undermined by the dozens of fans who had turned up beneath "Initiative? No thanks!" banners outside.

The tiger retreats

In truth, his campaign had been undermined much earlier, at the initiative's first press conference in December, when Kox said the new leadership would be prepared to sell shares in the club to sponsors to raise cash.

This raised the ire of fan organizations, who wield a lot of influence at AGMs. When it became clear that this commercialization strategy would not win over the members, Effenberg backtracked. That fatally wounded his credibility, and from then on his plans to reform the club looked increasingly redundant.

In late April, Gladbach's Vice Chairman Rainer Bonhof declared that Effenberg's big ideas, which included more investment in youth training and working to keep star players like Marco Reus and Marc-André ter Stegen, had long been part of the club's strategy anyway.

As a result, Effenberg spectacularly failed to win the support of the fans who once heralded him as an icon, and his campaign was brought down by a mixture of hubris and a desperate-looking, ever-changing strategy.

But the perennial stagnation at Gladbach was not defeated by Sunday's emotional AGM vote, and while the mood was lifted by that last-ditch survival, Effenberg did have a point when he told Bild, "I keep being asked about my concept, but what's the concept of the current leadership? Struggling against relegation year after year is definitely not a successful one."

Author: Ben Knight

Editor: Martin Kuebler