FROM PLAYING BORG TO PAYING FOR PARS
Damir Keretic shared a court with the ice-cool Swede and managed Martina Hingis ... now he’s involved in a whole new ball game as part of the investment team aiming to revitalise Dunfermline FC
FOR Damir Keretic, the road to Dunfermline, Scotland’s ancient kingdom, begins in the court of tennis royalty. The year is 1981, the occasion the Mercedes Cup. On the other side of the net, Bjorn Borg is trussed up in a rock- star headband awaiting serve. While police officers struggle to contain the fever gripping Stuttgart’s Weissenhof Tennis Club, the sweat on the brow of a 21-year-old Keretic reflects the size of the occasion.
‘I would argue that Borg was actually the biggest star of all,’ he tells Sportsmail on a Zoom call to discuss the 30-per-cent stake his DAFC Fussball GmbH consortium have acquired in Championship club Dunfermline. Four decades ago, the only spreadsheet he concerned himself with featured the latest rankings for the ATP Tour.
‘When I was in the juniors, my dream was to just be in the locker room once with guys like Borg. Just to sit and listen to them talk. When I had to play against him, that was a major moment for me, very special.
‘Even though we have social media and stuff today, I don’t think anyone is a bigger star even now than Borg was at that time.
‘ I was the l ocal guy and the stadium was sold out. People actually started to break through fences outside.
‘I lost 6-3, 6-2. But playing against Borg on clay at that time? That actually felt like an achievement.
‘I guess Bjorn felt I played a good match. His coach, Lennart Bergelin, called me the next morning to ask if I wanted to practise with him for the rest of the week.’
By July 1981, Borg had six French Open and five Wimbledon titles in his locker. Stuttgart was simply another trophy to add to the other 76.
Yet, within the year, the man voted Sweden’s greatest- ever sportsman in 2014 — bigger, even, than Zlatan — shocked the tennis world by announcing his retirement at the age of 26. Keretic (below) offers a small insight into why.
‘I asked him if he wanted to have dinner,’ he recalls. ‘ He thanked me and said: “I kind of have to eat in my room”.
‘Basically, he told me he could never go out and have dinner.’
Keretic had a decent tennis career. He reached the last 16 of the Australian Open in 1982. The next year he won four of his six ties as a member of West Germany’s Davis Cup team, by which time he was No 58 in the men’s rankings.
He lost to Ivan Lendl in the last 16 of the French Open in 1986 and returned to the Davis Cup as a team-mate of Boris Becker the next year. Even so, he admits: ‘I always wanted to be a better player than I was.
‘The only thing I have to say is that the fact I wasn’t as big a star as guys like Borg made sure that I still had to work after my tennis career to actually make money.
‘I didn’t have pressure because I made enough for quite a few years to be in a comfortable situation. But it was clear it was not going to last me a lifetime.’
As managing director of IMG Germany, he successfully managed Martina Hingis before establishing his own agency in Hamburg.
His first meeting with Thomas Meggl e came when the St Pauli legend rented his old apartment. Meggel played for and coached the cult Bundesliga 2 club — famously scoring a winner against Bayern Munich — before becoming sporting director. Picking the brains of Keretic on sports marketing, he outlined a plan to establish an agency advising institutions how to invest in football clubs. ‘I had never heard of anyone having an agency in that field. It sounded pretty good to me. My friend Albrecht (Gundermann) was in Portugal and someone had approached him about a football club. ‘So we all sat down together and discussed on a metaphysical level what i t would take to own a football club and make sense. ‘At that moment, another friend, Nick Teller, was looking for a new challenge. ‘He said: “If there is anything in sport you think interesting, get in touch”.’ A member of the advisory board of Germany’s Commerzbank, Londonborn Teller is also the honorary British Consulate in Hamburg. Gundermann, meanwhile, is a shipping specialist, the managing partner of a maritime organisation and has a PhD in law. DAFC Fussball GmbH are as far removed f rom Crai g Whyte, Vladimir Romanov or Angelo Mass one as it’ s possible to imagine. Yet, still the question has to be asked. Why on earth have t hey purchased a Scottish Championship club with a troubled financial past?
‘Two years ago, we started to look at clubs all over Europe,’ Keretic explains. ‘Austria, Portugal, Denmark, England.
‘That’s where we met clubs and, in the end, we thought the best fit for our goals was Dunfermline.
‘I understand why people are cynical. There are a lot of people who wake up in the morning and think: “I have a lot of money, wouldn’t it be cool to run a football club”?
‘For them, it’s a nice hobby. And it gives some a chance to be in the public eye. For some, it might help their original business and the believability of what they do.
‘We are not here to judge whether other people are doing the right or wrong thing.
‘We just have a very specific idea of how we want to do it.’
In recent times, investing in a club in Scotland’s second tier has made less sense than Donald Trump’s tax return.
In February, Dundee recorded a staggering loss of £1.82million.
Last year, Inverness Caledonian Thistle lost £892,000 and had to appeal to local investors for help.
While Dunfermline have witnessed stability since a brush with liquidation seven years ago, coronavirus forced the German group to scale down plans for a 75.1 per cent majority stake until lockdown restrictions eased.
Contenting themselves with 30 per cent for now, the option to buy another 45.1 per cent remains in place until May 31, 2022.
A further option to buy East End Park also exists.
Committed to spending the next five to eight years rebuilding the operation, Meggle is the football brains who plans to use the template set by St Pauli to forge a new brand.
‘It’s too simplistic to say we want to make Dunfermline a Scottish St Pauli,’ adds Keretic.
‘But I like the fact St Pauli has a position and a value in the eye of outsiders which is not dependent on their success on the field.
‘That’s what we are aiming for with Dunfermline. To make them everyone’s second club would be fantastic.’
The great yoyo club of the Scottish game in recent decades, the Fifers last played in the top flight eight years ago.
The new i nvestors offer no swaggering, bold promises of a
quick return to the Premiership. It’s not their style.
‘We are not saying we will make it to the Premiership or when we will make it,’ says Keretic.
‘It would be nice, obviously. But all we can do is i mprove the chances of the squad performing as well as it potentially can.
‘If we do small things right then, hopefully, the big things will fall into place.
‘We just want to give the club the chance to be the best they can.’
With no crowds in grounds until 2021 — at least — and the main source of commercial income gone, i t’s hard to think of a more challenging time to buy into a Scottish football club.
Speaking to Keretic, however, one thing is clear. For four men with successful professional backgrounds, damage to their reputation is a far bigger concern than any damage to their bank balance.
‘Some investors pump in millions and then they don’t feel like doing any more and say: “Okay I’m quitting,” and the club is left in trouble.
‘Nick is the honorary British consul i n Hamburg. Can you i magine i f he l eft a club in Scotland in trouble?
‘It’s important that the chairman, Ross McArthur, can walk through Dunfermline without being accosted.
‘Even if we had that kind of personality, we couldn’t afford to do it.
‘With our business backgrounds, reputation is important to us. And the reputation of the current Dunfermline board is al s o important.’
After all those years on the tennis tour, staying in hotels, dining on room service, trying to build up ranking points, Damir Keretic now prefers the status of a team player. In truth, he always did.
‘I always did better in every team event,’ he admits. ‘I was a Davis Cup man.
‘Answering why is a very deep psychological question.
‘But when I went on the court by myself, I was influenced a lot by the fact I was playing Bjorn Borg or s omeone r anked hi gher than me.
‘And when I played against a player l ower than me i n the rankings, I definitely didn’t want to lose against him.
‘When I played for a team, that was irrelevant. I’m just thinking: “I have to win this for the team”.
‘ This i s how we f eel about Dunfermline. We want to make the club better as a team.’