July 16, 2025
If you’re going to answer a manifesto, you might as well do it in a national newspaper. One day after the EFA’s big coming-out statement, ELF CEO Željko Karajica sat down with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and delivered the league’s first extended counter-narrative: No, we didn’t stiff you; yes, we can talk; and also, fine — we need to communicate better. Not exactly a surrender, not quite a victory lap — more like crisis management with coach-speak.
Here’s the gist, minus the paywall:
1) The big denial, front and center.
Karajica flatly rejects the core accusation that the league failed to meet its obligations to the teams. In his words — as quoted by FAZ and echoed by several summaries — he “will not accept” that claim. In the PR playbook, that sentence is your lead block. It plants a flag: the EFA’s narrative might be loud, but it isn’t the only one on the field.
2) The olive branch (polished, but real).
While he disputes the heavy charges, he also says the door’s open. Problems? Sure. Solvable together? Also yes — if everyone sits down like adults and hashes things out. It’s conciliatory without conceding the scoreboard. Think “we can fix this,” not “we were wrong.”
3) The mea sorta-culpa: communication & transparency.
This is the line that probably mattered most to fence-sitters: Karajica admits that communication and transparency haven’t been good enough — “myself included.” That’s not a confession of financial malpractice; it’s an acknowledgment that the league’s process and messaging lagged the moment. In 2025, failing to communicate is basically the eighth deadly sin.
4) Timing is everything.
The interview lands immediately after the EFA’s statement about transparency, fair revenue sharing, and conflict-of-interest rules. Which means the FAZ piece isn’t just a chat; it’s ELF’s first counterpunch: a denial of the harshest claims, paired with a promise to tidy up the softer ones (openness, clarity, updates). The message between the lines: don’t blow up the league — let’s fix the plumbing.
5) The meta-reaction.
You can tell an interview hit a nerve when your timeline fills with cropped quotes and outraged emojis. ran.de summarized the discussion the next morning; Foot Bowl splashed the “I won’t accept that” line across social; football diehards flagged the piece as required reading (or required arguing). The interview didn’t end the debate — it professionalized it. Now both sides had scripts.
So, did it work?
Short term, it gave the ELF a voice that wasn’t a legal brief. It also admitted — finally — that transparency isn’t a vibe, it’s a practice. Long term, it had to compete with a bruised trust account: invoices, governance questions, and already-organized teams demanding a seat at the grown-ups’ table. A single interview can’t fix all that, but it can reset the tone. And on July 16, 2025, that’s exactly what it tried to do.
The league didn’t blink — it nodded, then asked for a meeting.
