Kemme hopes to return Turbine Potsdam to glory

Tabea Kemme pulls up for her interview with DW at Potsdam's Luftschiffhafen sports in the white and blue VW bus. 

The vehicle has been her trademark since she purchased it with the bonus money she earned for winning gold with Germany at the 2016 Rio Olympics. If she has her way, that bus will become a common sight at the facility, where the players from women's football club Turbine Potsdam train alongside with many other athletes.

This was her home for many years. It was where she developed from an academy talent to a national team player. 

Kemme has since returned to Potsdam, the capital of the German state of Brandenburg near Berlin, following the premature end to her playing career. She was forced to retire in January 2020 at the age of 28 after an injury-plagued one and a half seasons with London-based side Arsenal.

Returning to her old stomping ground comes with a new ambition: to become president of Turbine Potsdam, and therefore the first female president of a Women's Bundesliga club.

Turbine Potsdam: A fallen giant

The club is a household name in German football. Between 2004 and 2012, the "Turbines" won the Women's Bundesliga six times, as well as three German Cups and two Champions League titles. During it's glory days, was home to Germany legends like Nadine Angerer, Ariane Hingst and Anja Mittag.

But the club has now gone nine seasons without silverware. They have also found it harder to compete as more and more men's Bundesliga clubs getting involved in the women's game. This past season, Potsdam was the only all-women's club to finish in the top half of the standings.

For Kemme, becoming the first women president of a top-flight women's football club is only side aspect. She just wants to help the club, for which she made 201 appearances as a player, regain its former glory.

"For the last eight years, the club has aimed to qualify for the Champions League and failed to achieve this," the former defender told DW. "I see a major need for change there."  

Kemme's plans to revive Turbine

A major part of Kemme's platform to revamp the club is to improve daily communication between management and the players.  

"When I moved to England, I learned how things can be done, how things have to be run, if you want to play professional football," she said of her experience with Arsenal, for whom she made just three appearances before retiring.

"For example, I was asked by the coach, 'Tabea, how are you? What are your strengths? What do you think about the (tactical) system? How can we interact even better here?'" 

Kemme had never before experienced this sort of communication "between him as a coach and me as a player. I didn't know that before. Not at all." 

The former German international also plans to professionalize the structures at the club, spreading the workload over more shoulders than it currently is. She also hopes to get more former players involved in management at Turbine.

"I have been in contact with many former players who also see the potential here and who are also prepared to take on an active role the club," Kemme said.

The board took the first steps towards implementing better structures a year ago when it hired a fulltime coach, former Bundesliga player Sofian Chahed. However, as Turbine's current president, Rolf Kutzmutz, explained, Chaled's responsibilities go far beyond those of a head coach.

"The athletic areas, the training plans, the individual training, the coordination with the youth coaches in terms of the playing system ... the head coach is responsible for all that," Kutzmutz said.

For decades, a man by the name of Bernd Schröder took care of all of those things. He was the face of the club until his departure in 2016. The person that took over from Schröder, Matthias Rudolph, did so on a part-time basis for the following four years.

"When you work part-time at a school and part-time for a club, something is bound to be left undone somewhere. And for us, that was the entire area of youth development," Kutzmutz said looking back on those years.

Prior to that, the youth development program had been the main source of talent for the women's team.

Broad spectrum of support 

Kemme has gathered a support team of eight people for her candidacy, including representatives from business and politics, a media specialist, two members of the current Turbine board, as well as Rudolph. With his experience as a coach and teacher, his task would be to reinvigorate the Potsdam women's team's work with the sports school and the Brandenburg state FA. 

While Kemme is aiming to change a lot as club president, she does not want to manage the day-to-day business of running the club, partly because she simply doesn't have the time. The former player already works 30 hours a week at the Brandenburg Police College. She is also spending three evenings a week working on a correspondence course in football analytics and leadership, which she is slated to complete in October. 

Last spring, Kemme traveled to projects in Ghana for the Common Goal initiative and is one of the founding members of the recently launched Female Football Academy in Berlin. 

Kemme believes that her experience as a player in Potsdam, her time in England and what she is learning in her studies make her the right fit to implement generational change at Turbine. Whether she will get that opportunity or not will be up to the club's members at Turbine's general meeting on Friday.

This article was adapted by Chuck Penfold