As Markus Weinzierl made his way into the WWK Arena on Saturday, his mood appeared to match the sun seeping through the rafters, as he waved smiling to familiar faces in the stands of the still-filling stadium. That the man who is still Augsburg’s longest-serving head coach should be warmly received is no surprise. It was just totally out of step with what has been a difficult and often fraught seven months in the Stuttgart job.
Fast forward a few hours and broadcasters could use that same footage of Weinzierl’s arrival in an entirely different context. Clutching a small piece of luggage, it looked as if the 44-year-old was making his way out – and he was, with Stuttgart’s 6-0 drubbing that afternoon precipitating an inevitable (and some would say overdue) exit from the head coaching post. Five hours after the Swabians’ biggest Bundesliga defeat since another 6-0 reverse at Werder Bremen in November 1985, Weinzierl was gone.
Thomas Hitzlsperger, the sporting director who inspired a brief upturn in fortunes after arriving in his post in February, moved to appoint Nico Willig, the under-19 team’s coach, instead of a relegation battle specialist “because of what I’ve seen from him in the last two years”. Willig has led the under-17s and now the higher age group – the under-19s lead their league and are in the Pokal final – well and, importantly for Hitzlsperger, “I know him and I know his way of working.”
Weinzierl might lament that he never really had that level of trust, though Hitzlsperger could have fired him when he took the sporting director role and elected not to. By then, arguably, the die was already cast. The coach walked into a chaotic situation back in October, which was underlined by a dreadful start – three successive defeats with no goals scored and 11 conceded. There have been moments (especially since Hitzlsperger became sporting director) where it’s felt like stability was on the way – an improving defence, led by the January signing Ozan Kabak, battling displays against better teams such as Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig, and useful points against Hoffenheim and Werder Bremen.
All that fell away on Saturday in 90 chastening minutes just two hours from home. Actually, it was all over after the first 45, by which time Augsburg led 3-0 via a trio of attractive strikes by Rani Khedira – like older brother Sami, a former Stuttgart youth-teamer – André Hahn and Philipp Max. Their statuesque defending had allowed the home side to look like Bayern or Dortmund, rather than a team aiming to put their own relegation fears to bed.
The image was of a largely disengaged, disinterested set of players who had given up not only on their coach but on themselves. Hours later Mario Gómez, Ron-Robert Zieler, Steven Zuber and the rest were attempting to placate a gathering of around 100 angry fans outside the Mercedes-Benz Arena on their return home, with rather more insistence than they had mustered earlier in the day. After the players left Weinzierl too exited the stadium, for the final time, stopping to get out of his car and speak to fans and journalists, rather than just duck out.
With that willingness to face the music, Stuttgarter Zeitung’s Gerhard Pfisterer described Weinzierl as “a fine man, even in his most difficult hour”. Asked for a final few words of goodbye by the beat writers, the now ex-coach said: “I wish the team all the best,” before correcting himself. “I wish the club all the best.”
The alteration of that single word was deafening. With Weinzierl gone, the task facing the club’s underachieving players is clear. They can “no longer hide behind the coach”, in the words of the journalist and author Oliver Trust. Hitzlsperger was not slow to press the players to take their share of responsibility in the game’s immediate aftermath, even before the coach’s exit was confirmed. “Every single player has to ask himself what he can bring to the table now,” Hitzlsperger relayed back. “It’s often said we do not want to go down. But I didn’t see any action in Augsburg that suggested they really want to avoid it.”
Contrast this with the joy of their less storied opponents, now all but mathematically assured of what would be a ninth successive season in the Bundesliga, which was hard to imagine when the team were promoted under Jos Luhukay in 2011. While Stuttgart could live to regret not shaking things up on the bench earlier, Die Fuggerstädter moved swiftly to head off their own concerns. It’s less than two weeks since the sporting director Stefan Reuter made the decision to get rid of Manuel Baum and his assistant Jens Lehmann – sadly denying neutrals the chance to see the former Germany goalkeeper get to work in a head coach role – and bring in Martin Schmidt, once feted during his spell at Mainz but who endured his own difficult spell, not entirely dissimilar to that of Weinzierl this season, at Wolfsburg last term.
For Augsburg, change has been the best medicine. Having scored a surprising but deserved win at Eintracht Frankfurt last week in some style, they carried it on here, with the two wins giving Schmidt the best start recorded by an Augsburg coach. Thinking outside the box has always been Schmidt’s primary strength and the jolt has worked. “Within a short time the Swiss,” wrote Johannes Graf of Augsburger Allgemeine, “with his emotional, inspiring nature, has got inside the minds of the players. Baum didn’t do a bad job in his nearly two-and-a-half years there but in a relegation battle, players are much more receptive to emotions than tactics.”
Schmidt’s personality and ability to jump-start Augsburg looks even more impressive in the light of coaching changes not really doing the trick elsewhere, with Hannover, Schalke (under the legendary Huub Stevens, no less) and Stuttgart failing to spark. Hitzlsperger must hope that this latest change proves the exception but he knows that the players, now more than ever, hold the key to steering the team out of trouble.
Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 Nurnberg, Bayern Munich 1-0 Werder Bremen, Augsburg 6-0 Stuttgart, Mainz 3-1 Fortuna Düsseldorf, Borussia Mönchengladbach 1-2 RB Leipzig, Schalke 2-5 Hoffenheim, Freiburg 0-4 Borussia Dortmund, Hertha Berlin 0-0 Hannover 96
Talking points
• Stuttgart can count themselves lucky that Nürnberg fell to a 2-0 defeat at Leverkusen, who won for the second time in a row to join a fascinating scramble for fourth place. In turn Schalke, humbled 5-2 at home by a surging Hoffenheim who also have designs on fourth, look like getting away with it at the bottom due to the shortcomings of others.
• At the top Bayern Munich remain a point clear, but they looked nervy against 10-man Werder Bremen until Niklas Süle’s 75th-minute shot took a sizeable deflection off Davy Klaassen and crept in. Dortmund responded on Sunday, keeping pace with their most convincing performance in weeks, a 4-0 win at Freiburg. They face Schalke in the Revierderby next week.
• Leipzig continued their sterling work with a fifth successive win, this time at Borussia Mönchengladbach, all but sealing a Champions League spot. Gladbach’s second-half comeback, fired by Alessane Pléa’s goal, was not quite enough but sparked optimism as they continue to battle for a top-four finish.