24.09.2026, 19:48 Uhr German football international Leon Goretzka cannot take part in the vote for a German Olympic bidder on Saturday because his club, Aston Villa, has vetoed the trip to Baden-Baden. Goretzka is injured and the Premier League club he joined in summer on a free transfer from Bayern Munich expect him for rehabilitation training. Goretzka would have been eligible to vote as a personal member of the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) at its assembly on Saturday. The two candidates are 1972 Olympic hosts Munich, where he played at Bayern for eight years, and Cologne/Rhine-Ruhr, the region where he was born and grew up. Goretzka had left it open who he would have voted for, recently telling the Bild paper: "Munich has become extremely dear to my heart over the past eight years, and North Rhine-Westphalia is my home." Two other of the eight personal DOSB members will also not be present when the city and the Olympic year for the bid - 2036, 2040 or 2044 - are chosen: monoskier Anna Schaffelhuber and canoe-polo player Elena Gilles. This means that the number of votes is 141 instead of 144. DOSB board members have one vote each and the 42 Olympic sports federation three each. Berlin withdrew its bid earlier on Thursday and Hamburg dropped out in May after its citizens stopped the bid via referendum.