AfD wants to nominate ex-football professional Berthold as Federal President

Federal presidential election AfD wants to nominate ex-football professional Berthold As of: November 13, 2026 • 5:37 p.m

According to ARD information, the former professional footballer Thomas Berthold is to enter the race for the office of Federal President for the AfD. The 1990 world champion stood out as a “lateral thinker” during the corona pandemic.

According to information from the ARD capital studio, the AfD will nominate former national player and soccer world champion Thomas Berthold as a candidate for the office of Federal President.

However, an official consultation and decision on this should not be made until Saturday at a conference between the federal executive board and the party's state chairmen. It had previously been said that the candidate would be a “man from the middle of society”.

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The nomination of its own candidate by the AfD has more of a symbolic meaning. In the Federal Assembly, which meets on January 30th, CSU politician Ilse Aigner, nominated by the Union and SPD, is likely to get the majority for the highest state office and thus succeed Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

At the 2022 Federal Assembly, the AfD nominated the former head of the Values ​​Union, Max Otte, who was therefore later expelled from the CDU.

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During his career, Thomas Berthold played for Eintracht Frankfurt, FC Bayern Munich and VfB Stuttgart, among others. The defender, born in 1964, played 62 international matches and in 1990 he became world champion in Italy with the German national team. After his career, he worked, among other things, as manager of Fortuna Düsseldorf and as an expert for several media outlets.

During the corona pandemic, he appeared publicly as a critic of the measures taken at the time. These were “completely exaggerated,” he told the dpa news agency in 2020. In a speech at a “Lateral Thinking 711” event in Stuttgart, Berthold stated, among other things, that his trust in the political leadership had reached “below zero”.

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The SPD politician Ralf Stegner sharply criticized Berthold's expected nomination. “However, you can only come up with the crazy idea of ​​being nominated as a presidential candidate by a right-wing radical party if you have done too many header exercises with a medicine ball,” Stegner told the Rheinische Post.

In principle, however, it is great when outstanding athletes take on social responsibility or volunteer after their active career, says Stegner.

This topic in the program: tagesschau.de | AfD sends its own candidate into the race for the federal presidential election | 11/13/2026 | 5 p.m