Borussia Dortmund even created a new role especially for him! Can a district-league goal-getter untie the transfer knot over Said El Mala?

On 12 August 2018, Simon Rödder ran riot in a Kreisliga clash between ASC Cranz-Estebrügge II and TSV Buxtehude-Altkloster. The visitors won 6-2. Rödder was the standout performer, scoring four goals in just 31 minutes.

"Simon is technically accomplished, assertive, quick and has a precise finish," his then TSV coach Horst Richters enthused to the Stader Tageblatt about the centre-forward, who had learnt to play football at TSV and had stayed loyal to the club apart from a one-year spell at Buxtehuder SV. But there was a catch, which the newspaper summed up as follows: "Bad: He is only rarely there."

Back then, Rödder was already juggling village pitches and the academic elite. Because of his business administration studies in Münster and the subsequent spell in Portugal, he was only sporadically available to the Buxtehude side. On kicker, Rödder's player profile is still there. It lists five matches and eight goals.

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What role does Simon Rödder have at BVB?

These days, the now 31-year-old no longer scores goals in the Stade Kreisliga. Rödder has been working for Borussia Dortmund since August 2025. His official title at BVB is: Adviser to the managing director for sport & staff unit for negotiation management.

BVB managing director for sport Lars Ricken created this new role especially. The 50-year-old explained the strategic personnel decision a year ago as follows: "As enormous sums are involved in professional football, for me it is a duty of responsibility that we also continue to develop in the area of negotiation management. That is why I created the staff unit for negotiation management. In Simon Rödder, we were able to recruit a proven expert to lead it, who at the same time supports me as an adviser on further topics." Ricken added: "Previously, he worked at a management consultancy specialising in negotiations and was responsible there for the sports sector. With this profile, he will support us in making processes in sport even more professional and efficient."

Since then, Rödder has been at the table when BVB negotiate. Most recently, he was part of the delegation around sporting director Ole Book, who achieved the breakthrough in talks regarding the transfer of midfielder Konstantinos Karetsas in Genk. It will now also be down to Rödder to untie the knot in the poker over Cologne's Said El Mala.

You can find a detailed profile of Konstantinos Karetsas here!

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Simon Rödder started out in professional football at VfL Wolfsburg

Rödder's CV before joining Dortmund is strikingly varied. He is not a typical former professional who slipped into an executive role after his playing career ended. He is probably best described as a data analyst and negotiation strategist working at the crossroads of management, science and behavioural economics.

That potential was already clear during his master's degree in marketing. In February 2018, he was accepted into the coveted WiWi Talents programme for the highly gifted. In the marketing major at the economics faculty, he beat well over 150 applicants and secured one of the sought-after 16 places. That also brought entry into the renowned WiWi Talents Book, which is sent directly to Germany's 500 most important personnel decision-makers.

He completed his CEMS Master in International Management at Nova SBE in Lisbon and the renowned ESADE Business School in Spain. The programme also included an extensive research project with the renowned consultancy McKinsey & Company, focusing on the global football industry and the realistic valuation of professional players. He also gained practical experience in the professional game as early as 2013 during a short internship in Football Operations Management at VfL Wolfsburg.

Rödder's aha moment: "The untapped potential of skilful negotiations"

From there, Rödder immersed himself in the world of data-based scouting. At the Dutch technology company SciSports, a spin-off from the University of Twente that was named the world's most innovative sports start-up in Cardiff in 2017, he took responsibility for the business in the DACH region and in southern Europe.

Alongside SciSports founder Giels Brouwer, Rödder presented their approach in Wales to representatives of UEFA, Adidas, Amazon and Microsoft. The aim was to close the gap between data experts and decision-makers in football. Rödder trained clubs and sporting directors to replace classic gut feeling with metrics such as expected goals (xG) or expected assists (xA). Among the 14 clubs he supported over the long term were Eintracht Frankfurt, Hertha BSC, FC Basel and Rapid Vienna.

Still, Rödder did not stop at pure data analysis. Through extensive exchanges with squad planners, he experienced a kind of aha moment. Rödder once described it like this: "The close cooperation with sporting directors in player recruitment opened my eyes to the relatively untapped potential of skilful negotiations."

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Rödder used the rumours around Ronaldo and BVB as a case study

He then moved to The Gap Partnership, a globally active consultancy for negotiation management. There, Rödder rose to become a Negotiation Consultant & Coach, led the global sports sector and delved deeper into behavioural economics and negotiation psychology. In a specialist article, he explained why transfers are particularly susceptible to false logic: unlike in free-market economies, there is no objective "market value" in football. Instead, prices arise purely through negotiating pressure.

Curiously, he used BVB of all clubs as a case study in that text. He analysed the rumours surrounding a move for Cristiano Ronaldo in 2022 and showed how such a megastar, despite his advanced age and enormous overall costs, could instantly multiply Dortmund's commercial brand value, for example in the Asian market.

Since then, he has been passing on that knowledge. In cooperation with the DFB and the DFL, he designs and leads specialised workshops for Bundesliga managing directors. Price: €5,900 per person. The questions addressed there include: How do you break the power of players' agents in negotiations? How do you use bonus payments as strategic negotiating leverage? How do you prevent emotional mistakes under intense time pressure on deadline day?

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Simon Rödder failed in the TV show "Die Höhle der Löwen"

Outside sport, however, Rödder also looked beyond football. Together with his father Oliver, a trained carpenter who studied interior architecture and founded a planning office for building conversions, he launched EasyMirror GmbH in 2021.

The company sells shatterproof, drillable and weatherproof plastic mirrors for equestrian facilities, gyms or gardens. In September 2022, Rödder even presented the product on the TV show "Die Höhle der Löwen" on VOX in order to receive 180,000 euros from potential investors for 15 per cent of the company shares. However, this venture failed.

Ultimately, Rödder's career reflects the continuing professionalisation of modern football: where intuition and instinct once played a bigger role, probability calculations and negotiation psychology now rule. His days as a clinical occasional striker in the Kreisliga are over. Even so, Rödder still belongs to a team. One that sets the course so that, ideally, BVB will score many goals in future, but also concede few.

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