An old acquaintance returns to the sidelines of VfB Stuttgart after 33888 days!
Bruno Labbadia (56) will be the new coach of the Swabian Bundesliga club, which is threatened with relegation, and will receive a contract until June 2025.
The club announced this at 4 p.m. in a press release on Twitter. The German press agency first reported on it.
Labbadia inherits interim coach Michael Wimmer (42), who took over for the promotion coach Pellegrino Matarazzo (45), who was released in October.
Wimmer is leaving VfB Stuttgart with immediate effect.
Labbadia, who last trained league competitor Hertha BSC for nine months until January 2021, is the Swabian head coach for the second time.
The experienced Bundesliga coach coached the relegation-threatened VfB from 2010 to 2013.
In 119 games during his tenure there were 50 wins, 24 draws and 45 losses.
Labbadia on the Stuttgart return: “As is well known, VfB is not just any club for me. I spent almost three years in Stuttgart, a very important phase of my coaching career, and now I want to help VfB stay in the Bundesliga.”
He is also quoted in the press release. “We will start work immediately and prepare everything for the start of training on December 12th. I’m moving to Stuttgart on Wednesday. Then we will quickly get an overview of the team’s level of performance and work hard and with great joy every day to move forward.”
Bruno Labbadia had already been a coach at VfB Stuttgart for three years
Only on Saturday did the club announce the commitment of sports director Fabian Wohlgemuth (43) as the successor to ex-boss Sven Mislintat (50).
The Swabians parted ways with Mislintat after talks lasting several days and after around three and a half years.
BILD has already reported that Wohlgemuth’s first task as sports director should be to hire a new coach.
As VfB confirms the BILD information, Bernhard Trares (57) will become assistant coach.
The two know each other very well. They already played together in youth selection teams, later they played together at Darmstadt 98, at KSC and at Werder Bremen. In 2015 Labbadia brought his youth buddy to the coaching team at HSV. Most recently, Trares was head coach in Würzburg. He has been without a club since April 2021.
In addition to him, Benjamin Sachs (41) will also become Labbadia’s assistant.
On December 12th, Labbadia will conduct his first training session as the new or old head coach at VfB Stuttgart.
