Germany - VBL 1. Bundesliga 2018/2019

    Quote from Matthias

    It was just a matter of time, now Katharina Schwabe has officially renewed her contract with Dresden for 2 more years.


    Dominika Strumilo is leaving though, the contract was mutually resolved. Probably better for both sides...


    Yes, both decisions are no surprise - Dresden and Strumilo was no working connection of the required level.

    German teams in Euro Cups 2018/19:


    SSC Palmberg Schwerin - CL pool phase
    Allianz MTV Stuttgart - CL qualification phase
    Dresdner SC - CEV Cup
    Ladies in Black Aachen - Challenge Cup


    First international appearance for Aachen, they got a special permission to play in their regular hall and they hope to become more interesting for potential new signings by playing internationally.
    Dresden is pissed big time, according to the old ranking system they would have been eligible for CL qualfication phase and they wanted to play it, now they have to play CEV Cup :down:

    so the german teams are financially able to play in the CL in the upcoming season?

    I hope so :whistle: However I could imagine that CEV threatens with punishments for teams that refuse to play CL, so surely some teams are put under pressure to play even if they're uncertain. As far as I remember Stuttgart didn't really want to play CL but now they do, and Dresden said that even if Stuttgart or Schwerin did not use their place, they would not be allowed to have it instead and would still have to play CEV Cup. No idea what's going on between CEV and clubs but it doesn't feel right somehow...


    EDIT: Stuttgart confirms that if they had refused to play CL they would only have been allowed to play Challenge Cup, not CEV Cup.

    I heard the most important national federations may start their own confederation and leave CEV.


    FIVB and CEV show zero respect for the national federations and their clubs. World Nations League is already and epic fail and everyone is complaining about it. The NT schedule is too full. There are too many useless competitions and qualifications tournaments. The players travel about 40 hours each week. The number of injuries is crazy high. The club season lasts just 6 months, which is the same time of the NT season, which is awful, considering they took time to the clubs for useless commercial tournaments. And if FiVB is this bad, CEV doesn't look any better... CEV cups keep changing formula every 2/3 years, but the only result is the tragic level till the last rounds...


    German clubs are completely right not to play expensive CL, which gives nothing back in terms of money...

    Quote from SHAME

    German clubs are completely right not to play expensive CL, which gives nothing back in terms of money...

    Which leads me to another point: in the past clubs had to pay 10.000€ to start in CL, now it's 25.000€ :white: :aww:
    But of course, CEV "promised" to introduce higher prize money :roll: Like that will help clubs that play CL just to lose 6 matches and be eliminated.

    Quote from Matthias

    Which leads me to another point: in the past clubs had to pay 10.000€ to start in CL, now it's 25.000€ :white: :aww:
    But of course, CEV "promised" to introduce higher prize money :roll: Like that will help clubs that play CL just to lose 6 matches and be eliminated.


    Exactly. I wonder about the TV rights. Is CEV taking them all? It won't fix the problem, but at least it can provide some profit for the clubs eliminated at the preliminary rounds and pool stage.


    I just think about Katia Pedrini (President of Modena Volley): when she said CEV CL was an expensive, useless and anachronistic competition, people used to laugh at her face. Just look at the situation right now. It is even worse, since FIVB made even bigger mistakes when they turned WL and WGP into VNL, making the tournament way worse and useless. They should have just deleted it from the schedule once for all and have the continental and world competitions in the summer instead of september or october, like every other sport.

    I can wholeheartedly fully agree to everything, what Matthias and SHAME wrote here regarding the CL conditions and the reactions of German clubs.


    Regarding TV rights: the "nice" feature for CEV is, that the teams have to pay 10.000 Euro for every home match in CL pool stage and in the elimination rounds afterwards for an obligational laola1.tv internet stream - this way CEV gets high quality streams by exploiting team budgets. Similar is the affair named video challenge system, for sure a nice to have feature, but costs (when renting) are also about 10.000 Euro per home match for each team in the mentioned stages.


    Regarding Stuttgart and CL qualification this has to be imagined as follows: after the unwelcome alternative to play Challenge Cup instead, our manager Aurel Irion and sports director Kim Renkema obviously were figuratively begging on their knees, but with success, our main sponsors to spend those roundabout 150.000 Euro additional money for CL participation. Usually they won't do so, because they consider it (in a nail-biting realistic view) as a waste of money, because Stuttgart will be eliminated fairly early by clubs from Istanbul, Russia or Italy with budgets in the order of 5 to 10 times as Stuttgart has and not receiving a noticeable price money at time of elimination. For sure similar considerations were done by Schwerin in the last season and therefore decided, not to participate in CL than...

    Iris Scholten , 18 year OOP from Apeldoorn, signs in Vilsbiburg


    http://roteraben.de/nestnews/1…aben-holen-iris-scholten/


    Sport 1 shows 51 Matches inkl Supercup and Semifinal of DVV Pokal .


    http://volleyball.de/index.php?id=17&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=5002&tx_ttnews[backPid]=3&cHash=fbc8563166c85b473cdcc16d7f9c64c0&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

    Some more detail regarding European cups from Stuttgarter newspapers: because Dresden wanted at any prize playing CL (and has the budget for it), while Stuttgart wanted to go to CEV cup like the last couple of years, both clubs tried to exchange the rights for the competitions - but a clear no from the CEV cancelled this trial altogether. Afterwards Dresden became very sad, partly angry, and in Stuttgart they asked the (5) main sponsors, if they could give them more money for the CL gamble. If Stuttgart manages to get to pool stage, they would get an additional 100.000 Euro combined by the main sponsors, but our manager calculates with additional costs of up to 150.000 Euro in this case (a lot of air traveling, hotel costs and more) - so we have a financial risk of still 50.000 Euro, which can hardly be covered by special contributions like our team Europa, where we pay privately some money for the Stuttgart Indoors GmbH, to support participation in European cups - we are currently not enough members, to cover this completely.

    I saw, that Nele Barber will be 24 already in autumn - we will see, how she performs. It looks for me like Wiesbaden might have completed the roster with her, with just 11 players... indeed, they confirmed, for the time being these 11 are the complete roster.

    Here are more informations regarding Sport1 free TV airing of VBL for this and the next two seasons as regarding the improved general internet streaming via sporttotal:


    Sport1 airings


    sporttotal internet streams


    The most important key informations IMHO:


    more airings of matches, especially for the women's competition (but also for the men's competition), for example including both DVV cup semis


    better quality of internet streaming - and by cheaper system (automated cameras)


    more halls with internet transmission, aside from the 23 sites of first league also optional some second league halls (depends of them too, of course, for example Offenburg, which wants a first league license soon, will participate)


    no more costs for the league and its clubs for this, i.e. this deal is worth about 1 million Euro, and the teams have one cost item less than now

    There is a controversial discussion regarding Felix Koslowski, who is currently head coach of both German NT and Schwerin.


    Keep in mind, that everybody expects a similar rule like in Poland and Italy for season 2019/2020 and later, in the beginning there will likely 1 or 2 domestic players be required to be on court for every team in matches of duty.


    There was an article on a Stuttgarter newspaper about it: Stuttgarter ZN article (German) .


    Critique was articulated by Stuttgarts sports director Kim Renkema, manager Sandra Zimmermann and head coach Alexander Waibl for Dresden and by head coach Dirk Groß in Wiesbaden: they all tell, that it is very difficult to hire (good) German players for them, because Schwerin has the NT head coach as it's own, so NT players prefer Schwerin and also those German players, who hope to get into NT. Evers for the VBL, who is fatally also involved in Schwerin personally, declined these statements, but admitted, that the dual role of Koslowski is not always in advantage for Schwerin, because he has less time to work with the club players before a season, when the NT is coached by him (but nearly all NT coaches are also coaching a club team).


    One of the events referred to was the late and formally out-of-contract hiring of Kimberly Drewniok by Schwerin away of Wiesbaden, what was already mentioned and discussed a little in this thread.


    Essentially they all agree, that there are effects, which discriminate Schwerin from the other teams this way. IMHO for sole integrity reasons it would be better, if Koslowski would step down from one of his roles and change to a more neutral alternative. The integrity of the lead of DVV and VBL is questioned regularly by some state federations in Germany, by the way, for different reasons... anyway, these things might get even more interesting, when the mentioed domestic players rule comes into power.