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Ole Werner: To be heard more clearly than Thomas Müller
Photo: Stuart Franklin / Getty Images
Before you saw him as a TV viewer, you heard him.
Ole Werner, 32, coach of Holstein Kiel, is blessed with a volume that is probably needed if you want to reach players spread across a football field.
Werner praised ("Exactly the right idea!"), He warned ("Close the gap!", "Secure depth!"), He urged ("Yes! Yes! Yes!"), And that from the start of the game, 120 minutes long.
Werner was even more audible than Thomas Müller during the game against Bayern Munich.
What something means.
Werner achieved something with Kiel that hadn't happened in 20 years: he knocked out Bayern before the round of 16 in the DFB Cup.
The second division won 6: 5 on penalties in round two, after 90 and 120 minutes it was 2: 2.
"I met a lot of confused people in the dressing room," Werner said after the cup sensation in the ARD interview.
But he also said, "We stayed clear about what we set out to do," and that sounded less like confusion than a plan.
Against the attacking pressure of Bayern, i.e. the high, massive and well-planned start of the Kiel game structure, the second division professionals around defense chief Hauke Wahl remained more confident than many a first division team.
Not because they are better players per se.
But because Holstein has been pursuing a game idea for years in which precisely that type of opening plays an important part.
Regardless of who is the trainer.
Younger than Julian Nagelsmann
Since September 2019, Kiel's trainer has been called Ole Werner.
At 32 years of age, he is currently the youngest coach in German professional football, younger than Julian Nagelsmann (33).
Werner has never coached any other club than Holstein Kiel, the club in which he was already a player and then began coaching in the youth sector in 2013.
As modern as Werner's style of play seems, as young he is: He doesn't necessarily present himself like many other coaches of the younger generation do.
In interviews, he saves on tactical vocabulary. Before the Bayern game, he named SPIEGEL “unity” and “good cohesion” as the most important characteristics of his team.
But if you see Kiel play, you suspect that there is more to it than will and motivation alone.
He also wanted to try to bring his own qualities through against Bayern, Werner said in the run-up to the game.
Kiel succeeded, for example before the 1-1 draw by Fin Bartels (37th minute).
Defender Hauke Wahl found himself surrounded by three bright red jerseys, Serge Gnabry ran at him with speed.
But Wahl resisted the urge to hit the ball long so as not to lose it near his own penalty area.
He kept his eyes up.
He matched the free Jannik Dehm, who played the ball purposefully behind the Munich defensive chain, in the run of the goalscorer Bartels.
The calm lure of Bayern to one side, the very late, but then jerky game in depth, a three-on-three situation in the attack - all of this didn't seem coincidental, but planned by the coaching team.
Wahl later said at the press conference about the goal that his team was "very well prepared for this situation."
Your pressing is actually one of Bavaria's greatest strengths.
But it takes strength and concentration, both of which the Munich team have lost a little in the past few weeks of competitive games.
Werner and Kiel took advantage of this.
Of course, the storks didn't often do that.
Bayern did not actually allow many chances.
That Holstein used his better than the favorite explains the result.
How well the outsider performed at times, especially after the 2-1 win by Leroy Sané (48th), is shown by this number: Kiel's pass rate was 80.3 percent.
Only two teams achieved a higher score against Bayern this season: VfB Stuttgart (80.6 percent) and Atlético Madrid (84.2).
"Don't stand too close to your man, deliver passports!"
In extra time, the Kiel team were almost exclusively in their own penalty area, they looked pumped out, you could see the players how much each meter drained.
It was now not about opening the game and passing paths, but about running and biting, about not breaking in under the pressure from Munich.
"Don't stand too close to the man," Werner shouted to his players from the outside: "Close pass paths!" This, too, is a rather modern defensive approach; it makes the players pay a lot of attention, they can't just sit next to them face the opponent and wait, they must actively defend.
It worked.
Kiel saved himself from penalties.
The sports directors of some Bundesliga clubs will have heard Werner's calls.
Collaboration: Cedric Voigt
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