Uli Hoeneß stands protectively in front of his friend Clemens Tönnies. The meat manufacturer and supervisory board chairman of FC Schalke 04 have been overly criticized, said the honorary president of FC Bayern.
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Uli Hoeneß complains about dealing with Clemens Tönnies. “Sometimes it reminds me of my tax matters,” said the honorary president of FC Bayern in the “Blickpunkt Sport” of the Bavarian Radio. By “my tax thing” Hoeneß means his prison sentence for tax evasion. Tönnies, who is also chairman of the FC Schalke 04 supervisory board after a drastic corona outbreak with well over 1,000 infected people in his meat processing plant in the Westphalian town of Rheda-Wiedenbrück, massively criticized. The hotspot in the entrepreneur’s home town resulted in a lockdown in the district of Gütersloh and the neighboring district of Warendorf.
Hoeneß, however, does not want Tönnies to be pilloried by society. “If mistakes have been made, you have to stand by it. He does,” says the 68-year-old. If things have to be changed, “you have to do the same,” says Hoeneß. He assumes that Tönnies will do that – “if it is necessary.” The 1974 world champion is displeased that Tönnies’ achievements as entrepreneurs are swept under the carpet by current criticism. “It can not be that everything that he has done, what he has built up for a large company, is suddenly in ruins,” he says. For Hoeneß, however, these are “the signs of our society:” “Once you are there, there is no stopping you.”
Hoeneß did not have to fear a follow-up or even critical questions for his plea on tonnies by moderator Markus Othmer. Instead, with a superimposed family photo of the Hoeneß ‘, he led the conversation quite bluntly to the newly created free time of the long-time Bavaria patron. Hoeneß resigned from his post as President of FC Bayern in tears in November 2019.
