Shocking development: Coach change madness escalates without sense or reason

Following the dismissal of Cologne coach Gerhard Struber, only seven second-division coaches remain on the bench at the clubs they were with at the start of the season. A frightening development that casts the clubs' management in a negative light.

"The only thing missing is being shot after a defeat!" Nuremberg's former championship-winning coach Herbert Widmayer could hardly calm down. He had just been sacked as the first coach of the newly established Bundesliga, following a 5-0 home defeat to 1. FC Kaiserslautern. His former achievements no longer counted for anything at that moment. The pressure to succeed forced the club's management to act after just the ninth matchday. This was a completely new development for German football in the early days of professional football. Today, such events are completely normal.

A few years ago, a successor to Herbert Widmayer at the former record champions from Franconia once said after his dismissal: "I'm going to the town hall now. The mayor is awarding me the medal of bravery for three years in Nuremberg." Klaus Augenthaler knew what he was talking about. One of his maxims was: "Someday, you have to die, and if you're a coach, you'll be fired."

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This exact fate seems to befall a new coach almost every day in Germany's top two football leagues. It's sheer insane how quickly clubs are changing their coaches these days. And often, one gets the impression that the clubs are doing so without any sense or reason!

The wise words of Niko Kovač

Especially in the second Bundesliga, some managers seem to be losing their nerve. Following the dismissal of coach Gerhard Struber in Cologne, only seven clubs still have the same coaches on the sidelines who were in charge at the beginning of the season. This means that eleven clubs have already admitted before the final two matchdays that they entered the season with a misjudgment. This is hardly flattering for the club managers, who, however, would rather fire the coach as a habit than first question the entire situation—and possibly themselves.

And so, even before Ralph Hasenhüttl had to step down from Wolfsburg, his predecessor, the current coach of Borussia Dortmund, Niko Kovač, said something interesting about the situation at VfL: "In general, you don't have much time in the Bundesliga or in our business. But you have to ask yourself, when you look at how many coaches have been here in recent years, whether it's always the coach's fault."

Of course, they won't have been happy to hear that at the club from the German car city, which has spent a lot of money for many years trying to repeat the surprise success of 2009 under coach Felix Magath. But they will know better than anyone that there's probably more than a grain of truth in Niko Kovač's statement.

Sentences by Otto Rehhagel make you think

When the final curtain falls on this season in Germany's top two football leagues in two weeks, some clubs will be quite sad despite the coaching dismissals. It's part of the professional game that not everyone will have achieved their goals in the end. Fans and experts in Kaiserslautern, Münster, and Cologne will surely take a closer look at what the coaching changes ultimately achieved. At least with these clubs, the argument that those in charge wanted to use up every last bullet they could muster can still be accepted.

However, what drove Wolfsburg's leadership in the league's no-man's-land to not do things the way even their coach Ralph Hasenhüttl reasonably expected ("I'm assuming we'll go home today, work together for another two weeks, and then we'll see what happens in the summer") will probably remain a secret forever. Presumably, as always, they wanted to quickly throw someone to blame for the fans' displeasure. Not particularly imaginative, but common practice and certainly promising.

Otto Rehhagel, who was himself a so-called "firefighter" in his early days as a coach and only became a permanent fixture during his incredible 14 years at SV Werder Bremen, once said something very wise about the topic of coaching dismissals in the Bundesliga. At the time, after his painful dismissal from FC Bayern Munich, he was coaching his new club, 1. FC Kaiserslautern, and one of his former employers was on the verge of relegation from the top flight.

Rehhagel slyly commented: "17 years ago, they fired me from Fortuna Düsseldorf. And where is Fortuna today? It didn't help at all!" Statements that those in charge in the leagues could certainly think about a little longer – before making questionable and likely, once again, very short-lived decisions.