DeCoach Gerardo Seoane arrives at the press conference. © Rolf Vennenbernd/dpa
The new coach Seoane remained vague about his ideas and goals in Gladbach. The former Leverkusen player was all the more explicit with regard to transfers. The pressure on sporting director Virkus is growing.
Mönchengladbach - The ball is now in the sporting director's court. Gerardo Seoane was cautious when he was introduced as the new coach of Borussia Mönchengladbach, but sent a clear message on one point: the future success of the former Champions League participant, who has crashed in sporting terms, is largely dependent on the urgently needed squad restructuring this summer. "The squad opportunities have an important influence on how we want to play," said the 44-year-old successor to Daniel Farke, who is on leave, on Friday.
Seoane has been "in intensive talks" with sporting director Roland Virkus since signing his contract this week: "What attributes are we missing in the team? You would certainly like to see more dynamism going forward."
The Swiss is the club's third attempt to become successful again in 2021 after the inglorious end of Marco Rose's tenure in <>, who had left Borussia a title contender in an attempt to make Borussia a title contender. "We believe it's a good fit for Borussia Mönchengladbach," Virkus said of his choice.
His predecessor Max Eberl had already made similar comments on Daniel Farke in 2021 with regard to Adi Hütter and Virkus himself in 2022. Both had - like Seoane - also been given three-year contracts, but left after only one year - obviously failed due to the squad, which is considered difficult, which has excellent, but sometimes quite phlegmatic footballers in its ranks.
The former Bayer Leverkusen coach identified why things should go better with him as a "very negative question". It was the brashest sentence of the 44-year-old, who otherwise expressed himself quite vaguely on many things. Whether he can lead Borussia back to the international places is "not yet an issue for the current situation".
The messages he sent to Virkus were between the lines. "It is well known to everyone that the last few years have been difficult. It was certainly due to one or two transfer windows that weren't so successful," said Seoane, leaving no doubt that there had been a certain imbalance in the squad recently: "In a functioning team, you need different characters and strengths." Borussia have rarely been a functioning team in the past two and a half years.
The pressure on Virkus is now great. On the one hand because of his mistake with Farke last summer and on the other hand because of the elementary reconstruction. Virkus has already been supported by Nils Schmadtke (34) as the new sporting director. The decisive factor will be who Virkus and the son of the new Liverpool sporting director Jörg Schmadtke can sell for as much money as possible.
Top performers Lars Stindl, Marcus Thuram and Ramy Bensebaini have so far left the club on a free transfer. And around half of the 15 million euros that were spent on homegrown Jordan Beyer (Burnley) went towards the purchase of Julian Weigl - an absolute dream player of Seoane's predecessor Farke. It is at least doubtful whether Weigl will also fit in with Seoane's main favourite of fast-paced football. According to reports, a sale of Manu Koné could still bring in around 30 million euros.
Why Seoane got involved with Borussia despite the admonishing examples of his predecessors and the missed changes to the squad so far, he answered with a smile. "There's the size of the club with its huge fan base," Seoane said. "That was always impressive." However, if there is a lack of performance, this can backfire much faster than in the more tranquil Leverkusen, where he was last under contract until October 2022. Dpa