Soccer
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The new president of the Swiss Football Association (SFA) will be elected in Ittigen on Saturday. Peter Knäbel will be the only remaining candidate to succeed Dominique Blanc.
Peter Knäbel was put forward as a candidate by the Swiss Football League (SFL) in October. The 58-year-old stood as an outsider at the time, as the SFA’s amateur league – which received 47 of the 101 delegate votes – had already nominated Sandro Stroppa as its presidential candidate five months earlier. Blanc and his predecessor Peter Gilliéron (2009 to 2019) also came from the amateur camp.
After both the SFL (28 votes) and the First League (26 votes) came out in favor of Stroppa’s opponent in April, the Zurich native withdrew and assured Knäbel of his support.
Peter Knäbel, a Swiss-German dual citizen who lives in Solothurn, has experience at all levels of football. He ended his professional career in Germany and Switzerland in 1999 with the promotion of FC Winterthur to the then NLB as player-coach. As an official, he served as Technical Director of the SFA from 2009 to 2014. In October 2014, Knäbel took over the position of Director of Professional Football at Hamburger SV. In 2018, he moved to Schalke 04, where he was a member of the board. Most recently, he worked as a football expert for SRF.
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