The violent leader was called “the new club”.
The football club proudly announces that the ‘new Jürgen Klopp’ has been signed.
But some parents recognized Joseph and immediately raised the alarm about his history of violence against young women.
But by then it was already too late.
In fact, the club’s team did most of the right things when they hired Joseph last fall.
They requested the so-called limited record extraction without finding any serious objections. Joseph hadn’t belonged to any association for a long time because he was a private trainer, but the parents who had something to do with him put their thumbs up.
In a confident tone, the parents were summoned to a mandatory meeting.
“Meet the new Klopp! (…) We meet our new beautiful coach. [Han] He introduces himself and his thoughts on pre-season, the team and how he wants to work with us,” the invitation reads.
Featured article from Sportbladet
Soon, the parents raise the alarm about Joseph’s past. They featured a Sportbladet article from 2021 about a private trainer who was found guilty of assaulting and molesting five younger girls. He had been kicked, punched, spat on and threatened.
– It was horrible to see him. The president of the association says he looks unstable so don’t talk about him.
What the club didn’t know was that a limited excerpt from the record showed murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual offenses, child pornography offences, and aggravated robbery. But not assault and harassment, regardless of whether you’ve been molested once or repeatedly.
– It’s a crystal clear problem. We tried to do the right thing, but if we had known what he did, he would never have moved on, says the chairman.
It was clear to him that Joseph had to go. But tearing up the signed contract, which runs throughout the next year, proved not so easy.
– We signed an agreement with him that will cost us a lot of money if we can’t get out of it. That is why we contacted RF-Sisu Stockholm for support, says the chairman of the board.
It is not easy to break the contract
The process is ongoing. The club hopes to be able to break the contract without paying wages, but whether they will succeed in doing so is unclear at the time of writing.
– It doesn’t have to be obvious that you can fire someone for criminal acts that were committed even before you were hired, says Employer Alliance legal director Madeline Wagemeyer.
But maybe the club will get what it wants in the end, because a few weeks after signing the agreement, Josef was found guilty by the Stockholm District Court of another assault on a younger woman. He was sentenced to community service and to pay compensation to the victim, whom he stabbed in the chest, among other things.
Madeleine Wagmeier is unfamiliar with the case and only speaks in general terms, but points out that in a legal sense there is a difference between whether the crime was committed before or after the work began.
– It could be important. If this can be seen as disturbing one’s confidence, then off-duty offenses can certainly be seen as an opportunity to dismiss the person. But she says it is far from clear.
When Sportbladet wanted to ask Josef questions last year, he jumped into his car and left the scene. Before this post, he wrote that the last sentence is incorrect, but did not want to answer whether he intended to fulfill his mission to the Society.