Peter Pander

Peter Pander (* 19th January 1951 in Hannover ) is a former German football - functionary .

After the end of his active career, during which he played for Hannover 96 in the youth, the Lower Saxony practiced as a (player) coach in amateur football. For example, he worked at TSV Heiligendorf and SG Brackstedt in Wolfsburg amateur football and celebrated successes there as a part-time job (as a trained banker, he worked full-time for the Volkswagen Group ).

VfL Wolfsburg

Under the leadership of soccer department manager Manfred Aschenbrenner, Pander switched to the former league club VfL Wolfsburg in 1991 , where he initially took on managerial duties on a part-time basis. Despite a coach change from Ernst Menzel to Uwe Erkenbrecher , a VfL team consisting mainly of veterans (Ansorge, Plagge, Siggi Reich ) won the championship again in the 1991/92 season and now prevailed in the following round of promotion to the 2nd Bundesliga. After 15 years of abstinence (the club was relegated from what was then the 2nd Bundesliga North in 1977 ) , the Wolfsburg team returned to professional football and managed to stay in the class in the 1992/93 season .

Under coaches Eckhard Krautzun and Gerd Roggensack , VfL Wolfsburg reached the DFB Cup final against Bundesliga club Borussia Mönchengladbach in May 1995 and lost 3-0 at the Berlin Olympic Stadium. At the same time, the Wolfsburg cut in the 2nd Bundesliga with respectable successes and temporarily knocked on the gate to the 1st Bundesliga, which they only passed through in 1997 under coach Willi Reimann . At this point in time, the Volkswagen Group had long since released Peter Pander from his job as a full-time manager at VfL Wolfsburg.

After the league secured ahead of schedule in the 1997/98 season , the club, which was now supervised by coach Wolfgang Wolf , qualified for the UEFA Cup in the 1999/2000 season , where Atlético Madrid could not get past in the third round . Under Pander's leadership, the club decided to build a new stadium ( Volkswagen Arena ) to replace the VfL stadium on Elsterweg, which is partially listed. The Volkswagen Arena was finally inaugurated after almost two years of construction.

Coach Wolfgang Wolf was followed by Jürgen Röber and manager Pander, who was able to convince former national player Stefan Effenberg , who had retired from FC Bayern Munich , to sign a contract in August 2002, capitalized on the cooperation he had concluded with the top Argentinian club CA River Plate Buenos Aires and signed the highly traded Argentine international Andrés D'Alessandro for the equivalent of 9 million euros . After the onset and persistent downward trend, VfL Wolfsburg lost patience with coach Jürgen Röber and dismissed him almost exactly one year after he began his engagement. Röber was followed by Belgian Eric Gerets , who had recently been dismissed from Bundesliga competitor 1. FC Kaiserslautern , who secured relegation with Wolfsburg in the remaining weeks of the 2003/2004 season and qualified with the team for the UEFA Intertoto Cup .

The end of the Panderchen employment relationship came in August 2004 after a first round match in the DFB Cup with the U23 team of 1. FC Köln. VfL had won the game, but coach Gerets had used the Bulgarian national player Marian Hristov , who was signed by his ex-club 1. FC Kaiserslautern, who was not eligible to play due to a suspension. Those responsible in Cologne noticed this and immediately lodged a protest, which the DFB's sports court accepted and instead of VfL Wolfsburg, the U23 team of 1. FC Köln entered the second main round. As a result of this decision by the sports court, which caused the VfL Wolfsburg to be extremely upset, Pander took full responsibility and submitted his immediate resignation on August 24th. After several months of vacancy, the club appointed former national player Thomas Strunz as Pander's successor.

Borussia Monchengladbach

In April 2005, Borussia Mönchengladbach signed Peter Pander as the successor to Christian Hochstätter, who resigned in the wake of the flare-up of failure .

Pander made the most expensive transfer in Mönchengladbach's history when he signed the Argentine soccer player Federico Insúa for an estimated 4.5 million euros. Despite further purchases of new players and a change in coach, the hoped-for success did not materialize.

On March 8, 2007, Borussia Mönchengladbach separated from Pander after he had previously offered to resign.

Web links

• Peter Pander on VfL Wolfsburg on 11Freunde.de from April 7, 2009