Listen to the full interview via the Off The Ball Football Show podcast.
German football's ownership model is often trumpeted as the perfect way to run clubs, with pointed comparisons to the sugar-daddy influx into the Premier League.
About a dozen Bundesliga clubs including Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are run as limited companies via a 50+1 rule, which means they are majority-owned by the members. There are two exceptions to that rule: Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg who are run by companies.
But there are six other clubs which are still completely owned by members. One of those is 1983 European Cup winners SV Hamburg.
However, the club which Kevin Keegan graced is looking to breakaway from that tradition model. To explain why, Ger spoke to German football writer Uli Hesse who contributes to ESPN.
"In theory, the people who run the old-fashioned football clubs have a certain amount of control over the directors who run the limited company. But in reality that's not really what happens," said Hesse.
"Once the professional football division becomes a limited company, the normal member of the club really has no say about what happens in that branch of the club. In contrast to most other countries, our football is steeped deeply in the amateur spirit and clubs were actually prohibited from becoming companies for a long time."
It was during the football boom of the 1990s when German clubs were finally able to become limited companies as they "felt left behind" and that the "old-fashioned model was not sufficient to cope with modern football".
And now after three decades of stagnation, Hamburg are looking to make that step. The last major trophy won by the North German giants was the 1987 German Cup.
"It was just a couple of weeks ago when Uli Hoeness (Bayern Munich president) said that if run properly, Hamburg should be their big rivals. He makes such bold statements from time to time but their is a grain of truth to that," said Hesse.
"Hamburg have tradition and that should not be underestimated in football. They have a lot of fans and are in a big city. They even have a billionaire who's giving the money and finances transfers like the Van der Vaart transfer. And amazingly they are €100 million in the red. You can only explain that through years and years of mismanagement and that's really what has happened."
As Uli explained the realization that Hamburg have been mismanaged for 30 years and that they should be bigger "has led to a big frustration among the club's supporters and members."
That is why the club's members are pushing for a move to become a limited company. Hesse believes that aim is a "likely outcome."
Image: General view of Hamburg's AOL Arena ©INPHO/Getty
