WIf you want to establish yourself as a German basketball coach in the Bundesliga, you have to embark on a stony and possibly even impassable path. Currently only three of the 18 trainers have German citizenship, with John Patrick (Ludwigsburg) and Mladen Drijenicic (Oldenburg) only receiving their passports during their work in Germany. After Denis Wucherer’s dismissal on Monday in Würzburg, there is only one coach who has enjoyed his basketball training in this country.
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Wucherer fits perfectly into the drawer of the successful former player with a national team career who remains connected to his sport as a coach. But where does Sebastian Gleim, head coach of Hakro Merlins Crailsheim, who now has a special status among coaches, come from? The league’s youngest head coach at 37 years of age has gone his own way, has never lost sight of his dream and has increased his market value significantly since moving from the Frankfurt Skyliners to Crailsheim before this season.
Gleim’s career is not only atypical, but actually not even intended in German basketball. To put it simply: In the traditional basketball countries of South and Southeast Europe it is quite common for a young coach to earn his first spurs in the youth sector, then get his chance as an assistant coach in the professional scene with the appropriate perspective and ultimately make the leap to head coach at the highest level .
Few opportunities to present yourself
You can pursue this model as a career plan in Italy and Spain, for example, and achieve your goals with determination and performance. In Germany there is hardly any such permeability. Anyone who has ever been a youth coach usually gets stuck in the poorly paid coaching positions in the youth leagues. With a few exceptions, it’s extremely difficult to make a living as a basketball coach there. The lucky few who make the (first) leap as co-trainers to the professionals are usually condemned to video editing.
They rarely get the opportunity to present and develop their skills as trainers. Accordingly, the career aspiration of “basketball coach” is not often found in Germany. Gleim was not deterred by all these imponderables and hurdles. He got his first contact with the orange ball in Bad Hersfeld in northeast Hesse, which can confidently be called the basketball diaspora.
After starting as a coach in his hometown, he worked between 2005 and 2014 in Bremerhaven and Wedel as a youth coach, co-coach of the first men’s team, youth coordinator and in 2013/2014 as head coach in the 2nd Bundesliga ProB. This was followed by a move to the Skyliners in Frankfurt, where he was initially active in comparable functions. In 2019, after the departure of current national coach Gordon Herbert, the club promoted him to head coach of the Bundesliga team.
In his two years as head coach of the Fraport Skyliners, Gleim looked like a person who is under constant pressure. Although he delivered respectable results under sometimes difficult conditions, he was never able to swim free. When the club offered him to no longer work as a coach, but as a sports director, the father declined. Gleim wants to be a trainer.
So he accepted the offer from Crailsheim to succeed Tuomas Iisalo. The Finn had recently had two fairytale seasons with the Merlins, and there were enough skeptics who doubted that Gleim would be able to continue these successes. So far, however, he has more than met expectations. In the BBL, the Hohenloher are in sixth place and have won five of their last six games.
They reached the semi-finals in the cup and have a good chance of making it to the final against Braunschweig. In the international competition, the team survived the preliminary round. The Crailsheimers not only experience a successful Sebastian Gleim, but also a changed one. He gives his professionals more freedom and focuses more on speed than in Frankfurt. With 114.8 points per 100 possession of the ball, Crailsheim is the most effective offensive in the league.
While Gleim am Main obviously maintained a great distance from his team, he now seems more approachable and more relaxed in dealing with his players. He has shown that it is also possible as a German coach to make his way into the Bundesliga. But the framework conditions for young talented coaches have to be improved so that they will also face German colleagues in the future.
The author is twice trainer of the year.
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