Split
It’s nice that the manager Max Eberl is doing well again, but the choice of his new employer gives the story an unpleasant taste: RB Leipzig.
Of course it’s nice that Max Eberl, eight months after leaving Borussia Mönchengladbach for health reasons, feels “ready again” and is “full of energy”, as he says himself. Apparently the break did him good. In January he couldn’t and didn’t want to have anything to do with football anymore, the football he loves so much had made him sick, he was burned out, broken, at the end. It didn’t go any further, he urgently needed a break, immediately, had to get off this treadmill that takes empathetic people even more with it. The end was tearful, painful, even for outsiders, who respectfully saw a man who was neither ashamed of his tears nor of admitting his own weakness
Now Eberl returns. He’s getting back on that very treadmill that got him sick, that burned him out and that made him throw in the towel in January.
Max Eberl is moving from Borussia Mönchengladbach to RB Leipzig
The fact that the 49-year-old jumped back and voluntarily jumped into the hamster wheel is certainly not reprehensible. He has apparently recovered and has used the time of the muse for himself. In this respect, the allegation by the Gladbach fan initiative, which accused the Lower Bavarian of “shabbiness” because he is said to have prepared his move to Leipzig with his departure in January, is irrelevant.
But sitting at the levers of power, pulling the strings, is his job, and even more: his calling. And of course this football business is also a drug that can and does get you addicted – to influence, to meaning, to being the focus. Ralf Rangnick was also able and willing to continue after his burnout in 2011 and a break, more intensively and extensively than ever.
Max Eberl: His image has cracked
But what gives the whole thing an ugly taste is the new employer, RB Leipzig, the club construct that was only created in 2009 and was founded to promote a drink. RB Leipzig embodies exactly the opposite of what Eberl has always stood for in Gladbach for 23 years: tradition, passion, emotion, co-determination. A new employer could not have been much more different, an employer that he had regularly criticized, even rejected, in his Gladbach days. Now he is talking about the “huge potential” that he claims to have found in Saxony. whose bread I eat, whose song I sing.
Max Eberl is likely to be seen differently by many from December 15th, when his job officially begins at Cottaweg, the perception may have changed. His image as a likeable, pleasant, clever doer who successfully steered a traditional club through all kinds of rough waters for many years has definitely cracked. In Leipzig, Eberl has significantly more financial leeway than at Bökelberg, the club is intact. But one thing is certain: he also sold his soul to some extent with the change. (Thomas Kilchenstein)
