By the way – Sunday Blick column: “Ms. Oeri is one hundred percent right”

class=”sc-29f61514-0 jbwksb”>

When young Gigi Oeri fell in love with her anatomy teacher, Dr. D. In love with Andreas Oeri, she has no idea how much money this man has. She will find out later.

And I saw first hand how FC Basel tried for years to captivate the Oeri family with an interest in football. Unsuccessful.

When FCB President René C. Jaggi, Vice President Mario Kueni and Hanspeter Weishaupt, President of FCB-Marketing AG, sat at a table with the Oeri family in 2002, the delegation encountered granite. “We went out in shorts again,” Weishaupt recalls.

Shorts or not: Yaggi, who meets Gigi Oeri at the Bruderholz Lions Club, doesn’t give up and remains persistent. And he achieves what seemed unthinkable for decades: on September 16, 2002, the shares of FCB-Marketing AG are transferred to Gigi Oeri.

Four years later, the club’s owner also becomes president, the first woman to lead a Super League club. “The question of women does not arise at all. The times when people talked about emancipation and blondes are probably over. I am a woman, I would take the job even if I were a man. It just wouldn’t make such big waves,” she told me at the time while playing foosball.

The great rise of FCB begins. “Because I love making my own mistakes and I love celebrating my own successes, it makes sense for me to become president myself. This ambitious pursuit of the top is a lot of fun,” said the Swiss football pioneer.

Gigi Oeri is definitely more than the Basel bank. The fact that, years after her departure, she now complains about her lack of appreciation and says that her successor Bernhard Häusler moved her chair away from her causes a mild earthquake in Basel.

“But Ms. Oeri is 100 percent right in everything she says,” says Weishaupt. Nobody wants to belittle the merits of Bernhard Heusler. But there is no doubt that Ms. Oeri was much more than just a financier. “She was a doer far beyond financial obligations.” He can understand a certain disappointment that it is not appreciated enough.

The fact that Oeri also made unpopular decisions reinforces this impression. Example: She will not renew the player’s contract with the current national team coach Murat Yakin. “Yakin did a lot for the club, but he also got a lot in return. When players are in a strong position, they let the club feel it. On the other hand, we must accept that a player who has been injured for so long and whose future is unclear will not receive a contract extension. With all due respect, we are not social security. The other players have also done a great service for the club.”

No home bank says that.

Source: Blick