First female coach to run German men’s club kicks off new season at Bundesliga

As the first days of the new year pass, Germany’s top football division is entering 2026 with a notable shift, as the Bundesliga sees its first-ever female club chief executive take office.

Tatjana Haenni began her role at the start of the year after being appointed in December as head of RB Leipzig’s management board and chief executive officer, German media report. 

The 59-year-old Swiss national is a former international footballer who earned 23 caps for Switzerland and brings extensive experience in football administration. Over the course of her career, she has worked for UEFA, FIFA and the Swiss Football Association.

Haenni previously oversaw women’s football at the Swiss FA and later served as sporting director of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in the United States, among other senior roles, until her departure earlier this year.

“In our discussions, she impressed us and the committees with her expertise, as well as her combination of specialist knowledge, leadership strength and strategic thinking,” said Oliver Mintzlaff, now chair of RB Leipzig’s supervisory board.

While women have reached senior management positions at German clubs before — including Anne-Kathrin Laufmann as managing director for sport and sustainability at Werder Bremen, Christina Rühl-Hamers as chief financial officer at Schalke, and Katja Kraus as former head of communications and marketing at Hamburg — no woman has previously held the top executive role at a Bundesliga club.

England, which is referred to as the birth place of the football sport, saw its first female club coach for the male division only in 2023, when Hannah Dingley was appointed to run Forest Green Rovers FC, a club in England's fifth-tier National League. The French men's football world welcomed its first female coach already back in 2014 with Helena Costa at the second division club Clermont Foot 63.

Despite the growing professionalization of women’s football in recent years, gender disparities within professional football structures remain pronounced. Alongside well-documented gaps in funding and salaries between men’s and women’s competitions, representation off the pitch is even more uneven. Even in women’s football, executive leadership remains male-dominated. According to data compiled by Football Benchmark on England’s Women’s Super League — one of the most advanced women’s leagues — seven senior leaders responsible for women’s football are women (58%), while five are men (42%).

RB Leipzig, founded in 2009 and owned by Austrian energy drinks company Red Bull, was promoted to the Bundesliga in 2016. Since then, the club has won two German Cups, lifted the 2023 Supercup and reached the semi-finals of the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League. Leipzig currently sit second in the Bundesliga table, eight points behind leaders Bayern Munich, as the league resumes after its traditional winter break from December 21 to January 9.

By Nazrin Sadigova