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Early coach dismissals: German football has a management problem

2020-09-30T12:39:03.381Z


It's only been two game days, but four coaches have already had to leave. There may be arguments for every dismissal. But the abundance of cases and the timing show that German football has a management problem.


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David Wagner (at his last game as Schalke coach)

Photo: 

Moritz Mueller / imago images / Moritz Müller

Football is controlled by unwritten laws.

One thing is: the coach is the weakest link and has to leave if it fails - or "take responsibility", that sounds a bit more professional.

You can't replace the whole team.

Football executives like to hide behind this argument.

The current development shows that there is rather a structural failure at the management level.

In the past few days, the unwritten law has been executed four times in the top three leagues: David Wagner has not been a coach at Bundesliga club FC Schalke since Sunday.

A day later, Achim Beierlorzer had to go to Mainz.

Michael Schiele caught it at the second division Würzburger Kickers and Boris Schommers was given leave of absence in Kaiserslautern one league lower.

All four coaches have one thing in common: they lost the first two games of the season.

Two of 34 and 38 games respectively.

Now the four decisions should not be equated across the board.

There are individual starting points and individual arguments can be found that allow a justification:

  • Wagner had only won one game at Schalke in the previous second half of the season.

    The sporting trend has been worrying for this big club.

  • In Mainz there should already have been atmospheric disturbances between Beierlorzer and parts of the team last season.

  • Schiele had led the Kickers to a surprising rise.

    But the ambitious sponsor and his football boss Felix Magath think bigger and hesitated for a long time before continuing to hire the coach.

  • Kaiserslautern is in insolvency proceedings.

    That alone makes the dismissal explosive, because Schommers - like the other coaches - must initially continue to be paid.

    The FCK is now talking about not having come to a common denominator with the coach in the sporting direction.

Four clubs, four decisions, one reading: the doubts about the coaches' work were not new, they had grown over the months.

And yet it was decided in the summer to go into the season with Wagner, Beierlorzer, Schiele and Schommers.

They were allowed to take responsibility for a complete preparation, to have a say in transfers, to determine the tactical direction of the team.

If those responsible had decided to split up three months ago, it might not have been popular.

But that is exactly what managers, board members or sporting bosses should do if there are major concerns: make unpopular decisions in order to move the clubs forward.

Because now new trainers are joining who do not receive any preparation, have to get by with ready-made cadres and are therefore less able to organize.

For a long time, one of the unwritten laws in football was that it was often enough at the management level to be an ex-player, if possible with a so-called "stable odor".

There are now, at least in the Bundesliga, opposing tendencies.

Ex-professionals like Thomas Hitzlsperger (club boss VfB Stuttgart), Simon Rolfes (sports director Bayer Leverkusen), Sebastian Kehl (head of licensed players department Borussia Dortmund) and Hasan Salihamidzic (sports director FC Bayern) combine stable smell with a certain intelligence.

But the much larger, structural problem has remained so far: there is still no standardized training to become a football manager, as is the case with coaches, who have to successfully complete a football teacher training course before they are entrusted with a team.

In the fortunes of entire clubs, however, they have so far not done so, even though they are often commercial enterprises with sales in the three-digit million range.

German football has at least recognized this deficit.

The German Football League (DFL) and the German Football Association (DFB) start the "Management in Professional Football" program in October. 14 participants are registered, including Schalke's ex-professional Sascha Riether, who now works there as the coordinator of the licensed players' department.

Maybe he'll bring a tip or two for Schalke's sports director Jochen Schneider.

One should become law: Anyone who fires the coach after two match days has done something wrong beforehand.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2020-09-30

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