In the hot seat

Of course, people generally think in simple patterns. If this is possible, of course. Something like this: I am successful, I meet all the requirements, and as a coach I lead my team to victories that even make history within the club. Basically, I'm firmly in the saddle, even if there may be one or two slumps in the further course of my work. As I said, this is a completely understandable assessment.

Domenico Tedesco, for example, won the DFB Cup as the successor to the unfortunate Jesse Marsch at RB Leipzig, for whom he was signed last season. It was the first title for the retort association, which is and should not be much more than that, as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy by an Austrian soda manufacturer. Everyone was happy then and hugged each other tightly. Above all, Oliver Mintzlaff, the managing director of RB Leipzig GmbH, and Domenico Tedesco were wonderfully fond of each other in these moments of great football happiness. It's almost as if a wonderful male friendship is brewing. But this season the team rumbled down the Bundesliga road like a car with only three wheels and then there was a terrible 1-4 defeat against Shakhtar Donetsk in the first game of the Champions League. At home and not in war-torn Ukraine. Again four goals conceded like before in the Bundesliga game against Eintracht Frankfurt. That was already too much for their young friendship. It's over. Tedesco was fired, and Mintzlaff followed him up with the usual platitudes, culminating in the sentence that the decision to fire Tedesco was very difficult for him. After the cup victory, the now fired coach was offered an early contract extension until 2024, which Tedesco rejected. Clubs are business models The example of this short episode of a responsible trainer - Tedesco was only in office for 109 days - shows on the one hand the relentlessness of the industry and on the other hand also reveals a blatant lack of perseverance. There are exceptions, of course. In Stuttgart last year they went into relegation with Pellegrino Matarazzo. The Swabians may have been nervous, but they strengthened their coach's backbone in an extremely difficult situation. FC Freiburg and Christian Streich must of course be mentioned. The people from Breisgau remained loyal to their coach even after they were relegated from the Bundesliga. Now they lead the table. Stuttgart and Freiburg are of course traditional clubs with established structures.

Domenico Tedesco was fired. © ANSA / Filip Singer

RB Leipzig is unmistakably a business model and that's why even the slightest deviation from the path to profitability is a medium-sized catastrophe, which is countered with the usual reaction in football: with the dismissal of the coach. No, it's not the person who hired the coach who is now suddenly unsuccessful who is being criticized - Oliver Mintzlaff in the case of Leipzig - but rather the surprisingly weakest link in the chain. The coach who basically has to pay for the catastrophic mistakes of his players (basically two own goals against Donetsk). Past achievements don't count Domenico Tedesco was the first in the coaching carousel to be thrown off. The next one followed with Thomas Tuchel at Chelsea FC. His former employer, once owned by oligarch Roman Abramovich, is now owned by a private consortium. The Clearlake Capitel Group from the USA is not a collection of funny patrons who are simply interested in sports, but rather their shareholders want to see sales and make money. Too many defeats prevent the desired goals. Thomas Tuchel, like his colleague Tedesco, cannot draw on the glory of the past. He won the Champions League in 2021 and was then even elected FIFA world coach. After all, he probably has a pleasant financial backing, especially since the current contracts cannot simply be thrown into the shredder. They still need to be served.

The news of coach dismissals is still fresh and unusual due to the early timing, but soon this will be everyday life. As we have just seen, this is not a phenomenon concentrated in one country. Where there is no success, if you have no other imagination, you resort to the scenario that is standard in the industry. The coaches who we believe have all the power in the world because they can decide who plays or who sits on the bench are ultimately just the most easily replaceable figures in a game where integrity, trust and... Above all, longevity only plays a role in very few cases.

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In the hot seat

The football season has just started and there are already the first coach layoffs. Longevity and trust, our columnist Sigi Heinrich notes, are subject to tough business practices. Losses of points are equated with financial losses.

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