Markus Weinzierl is no longer the coach of 1. FC Nürnberg
Source: dpa/Daniel Karmann
Markus Weinzierl only took over at 1. FC Nürnberg in October. Now the coach has already lost his job after Sunday’s debacle. Now the sports director sits down personally on the bench.
Nfter the Heidenheim debacle, 1. FC Nürnberg parted ways with coach Markus Weinzierl. The second division football team, threatened with relegation, announced this decision on Monday. The traditional Franconian club had lost 5-0 at 1. FC Heidenheim the day before and revealed blatant deficits.
The people of Nuremberg also released Weinzierl’s assistant Tobias Zellner. The player replacement training was led by assistant coach Frank Steinmetz. After that, the sports director takes over personally: The new coach is Dieter Hecking. The club announced this on Monday afternoon.
Weinzierl (48) only took over last October, almost 20 weeks ago, from Robert Klauß, who was on leave. He was initially able to stabilize the team defensively, but he was also unable to initiate an upswing. Weinzierl had previously looked after FC Augsburg, VfB Stuttgart and FC Schalke 04.
Now it’s against the last
In its current form, 1. FC Nürnberg must be very concerned about staying up in the second division. The crisis team is 13th in the table with 22 points, but the advantage over relegation rank 16 is only two points. Next Saturday, FCN will receive the bottom of the table from SV Sandhausen in a crisis duel.
“We have to pull ourselves together quickly in the week to straighten that out against Sandhausen. We are the ones who have to move even closer together in order to achieve better results,” Hecking demanded after the disaster in Heidenheim and now decided that he is the right man for it. Hecking sits on the bench himself until the end of the season. As he announced at a press conference, U23 coach Cristian Fiel (42) will be his assistant. This is the “new constellation until the end of the season”.
In the current situation, Chairman of the Supervisory Board Thomas Grethlein spoke of the “best solution” for the club, but also called the additional job for Hecking a “risk”. But he will “definitely only look after the FCN as a coach until the end of the season”. Hecking was last in charge of Hamburger SV as a coach until the summer of 2020. After that he became sports director in Nuremberg and had actually declared his coaching career to be over.
