AAlso on Wednesday evening, Dieter Hecking will explain a football game shortly after the final whistle. 1. FC Nürnberg meets VfB Stuttgart in the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup (6 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the DFB Cup and on Sky). 50,000 people will watch from the stands, the Max Morlock Stadium was sold out very quickly after the draw. Hecking would also like to sit in the stands, but he’s not allowed to.
Hecking is now a coach again, he never really wanted to be that again. After his unfortunate year as a coach at Hamburger SV, he returned to 1. FC Nürnberg in the summer of 2020. To the club that he surprisingly left for Wolfsburg in the winter of 2012 because the coach Hecking wanted to achieve more than the first division midfield.
Many people took offense at him in Nuremberg, but when he returned in 2020, joy prevailed. Dieter Hecking will no longer work as a coach, Hecking said at the time. He wanted to be sporting director now, to take care of the big picture at a club that had almost fallen into the third division a few weeks earlier. Only Fabian Schleusener’s toe prevented that in the sixth minute of added time in the relegation second leg against FC Ingolstadt.
When the fan soul boiled over
Hecking should raise the club again. Together with the young trainer Robert Klauß, he succeeded surprisingly well. The “club” first played a carefree and then a hopeful season. The third year was supposed to get even better, but it got a lot worse.
Sports Director Hecking had announced a place in the top third as a goal for the season. It was the relegation battle, once again. Hecking was dissatisfied and dismissed Klauß in the fall, whose contract he had only recently extended. He was succeeded by Bundesliga-experienced Markus Weinzierl, which turned out to be a misunderstanding in record time. After a 0:5 in Heidenheim, the fan soul boiled and Hecking decided to release the next coach.
A day later he was back on the training ground himself, busy with the daily detailed work in order to somehow save the big picture. Or: The trainer Dieter Hecking now has to save the job of the sports director Dieter Hecking. “All in”, said Thomas Grethlein, the chairman of the supervisory board, Hecking is going with his return to the bank.
Either everything will be okay, or Hecking has failed. He will now be a coach again by the summer, when the plan is for him to return to his post as sports director. Not everyone in and around Nuremberg is really convinced of this plan.
The “club” is playing soccer again
The fact that the coaches weren’t the only ones to blame for the failure is no longer a minority opinion around the “club”. The composition of the team, for which Hecking is responsible together with sports director Olaf Rebbe, is considered at least unfortunate. The selection of Weinzierl, whose style did not suit the team, is also considered a mistake by the sports director, who is still a learner in this function.
After all: Hecking is a good coach, he is showing again. Together with his important assistant Cristian Fiél, he lets the team play football again. And she gratefully accepts it after she lost her identity because of the ideas of Hecking’s predecessors. The “club” is still in the middle of the relegation battle but has regained hope due to the results and style of play under Hecking.
Also important: With the new approach, the bond with the disappointed audience has grown again. “I’m very grateful for that,” said Captain Christopher Schindler on Friday evening. Shortly before, he had sealed the defeat against leaders SV Darmstadt 98 with an own goal, but he had also seen the team leave the curve with applause.
“A lot of work”
That was certainly due to the upcoming cup game against VfB, with which many hopes are attached. But it was also because the people of Nuremberg believed in wanting to develop something like a game idea. “People can identify with that more than if we just try to wall something up and then happily score a goal,” said Schindler.
Anyway, it won’t help against VfB to hope for anything. If they really want to make it into the semi-finals, Nuremberg will have to show their best performance of this difficult season – and even then they will remain the outsiders. “We’ll have a lot of work to do,” said Hecking after the Darmstadt game, referring to VfB, “we need everything: mentality, passion and the crowd.”
Despite all the anticipation, the game against VfB is just a so-called bonus game. It will be more important on Saturday when Karlsruher SC comes to the Max Morlock Stadium (1 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the second Bundesliga and on Sky). Then it’s back to everyday life in the second division relegation battle, again a struggle for existence. And down on the track, coach Dieter Hecking will be sitting on a chair trying to prevent the crash.
