Kit’s almost 15 seconds. 15 seconds full of emotions, full of adrenaline. Let’s listen to the video sequence from May 19, 2018, the day five years ago when Eintracht Frankfurt sensationally won the DFB Cup against Bayern in Berlin. The game ended 3:1, in which Mijat Gacinovic caused complete ecstasy with his goal in the sixth minute of stoppage time, also on the club’s own TV.
„It’s through. It’s through. The gate is empty. Gacinovic is running. And he’s running. And he’s running. And he makes the goal. goooooor. 3: 1 for Eintracht Frankfurt. That’s the decision. Eintracht is the 2018 DFB Cup winner. The voice is gone, the emotions are there. The curve snaps. That’s insane.“
An enduring moment that the club followed four years later when Rafael Borre converted the crucial penalty in the Europa League final against Glasgow Rangers in Seville to ensure a historic victory. And now? What happens on Saturday evening when the Hessians have another chance to make history? At 8 p.m. they meet RB Leipzig in the German Cup final in the Berlin Olympic Stadium. And just like back then, there is a coach outside on the sidelines for whom it will be the last game as the responsible coach at SBU. At that time his name was Niko Kovac. This time his name is Oliver Glasner. So the coach who will forever be remembered as the father of Sevilla’s success in Frankfurt.
Greatest success of his career so far: Glasner won the Europa League with Eintracht
Source: dpa/Sebastian Gollnow
“He belongs at Eintracht at the top as far as the coaches are concerned. They won the Europa League and reached the Champions League for the first time. He can also win the cup,” said long-time Frankfurt coach Friedhelm Funkel Glasner before the duel with Leipzig. That is already a statement.
Glasner’s farewell is noisy
Nevertheless, Glasner goes. After just two years. On May 9, the SBU officially confirmed the separation at the end of the season. An end that had already been indicated in the weeks before, after more and more discrepancies and different opinions were mentioned. Ten winless league games in a row fueled a debate that apparently had its origins at the beginning of the season in the composition of the squad, Glasner, who apparently wanted a new central defender after Martin Hinteregger’s career ended, but did not get him from sports director Markus Krösche , did not meet the highest standards. When Frankfurt lost 2-0 at Union Berlin in mid-March, Glasner said afterwards: “You can’t train quality”. The sentence was bitter internally, as was the coach’s outburst after the game in Hoffenheim, when he replied to a questioning journalist, to whom he later apologized publicly and who had recorded a sentence from Krösche: “Stop me with this rubbish .”
Eintracht board member Axel Hellmann then spoke of “thin skin” to “Bild” when he was asked about the coach’s appearance – and added in relation to the coach debate, which only ended two days later: “It’s a debate that doesn’t we started as a club. This arose from the fact that our offer (contract extension, d. R) has not been accepted.”
In the meantime there is clarity – and also the wish for a happy ending. Kevin Trapp, Eintracht’s national goalkeeper, is hoping for the best possible farewell. The separation is “unfortunately part of the football business”. Since Glasner played a major role in the Europa League victory and also in getting into the cup final, according to Trapp, he should ultimately go “through the really big door”. “He will leave the club, but then hopefully with two titles,” said Trapp: “We want to give something back to the coach. He deserved it.” Due to the great solidarity within the team, they are able to “play really big games and celebrate successes”. The fact that RB is better at football does not play a major role for the goalkeeper. “No one believed in 2018. Very few believed we could win the Europa League. But we know the energy that can develop in this club.”
Oliver Glasner knows that too. The fact that he is now leaving the Bundesliga fits into the image of the club, which has regularly caused a stir in the coaching position in recent years. Whether sporting, because things went well with the trainer – or off the field, because at the end of the respective term there was trouble, discrepancies, displeasure. Goodbyes were never quiet.
Memories of Kovac
Like in 2018, when Niko Kovac suddenly announced in April that he would make use of an exit clause and switch to Bayern Munich. Fredi Bobic, then sporting director, had just returned from Copenhagen, where he had arranged the transfer of Frederick Rönnow – now a regular goalkeeper at 1. FC Union Berlin – when the coach reached him on the phone to inform him that he going to Munich. The outcry in Frankfurt was great. The club was on course for the final in the DFB Cup and was seventh in the league.
Kovac, however, had made his decision and did not want to accept the criticism of a statement made almost a week earlier about staying in Frankfurt (“There is no reason to doubt that I will not be a coach here next year. Period.”). At the time, he assured there had been no contact. That then changed suddenly, said Kovac, especially since he had previously left a back door open and said: “So much is happening in football, I don’t know what tomorrow will be. As of now: I’ll be the coach here until 2019.” It was clear to the coach that he hadn’t lied. Nevertheless, Kovac’s “as of now” statement subsequently became a kind of phrase in the football industry, with which it seems that you buy yourself a little time until the final truth.
Kovac, however, delivered after his change announcement. As upset as the fans were at the time, the coach made it into the cup final with Eintracht, where he sensationally beat his future employer and was enthusiastically celebrated by the fans who traveled to Berlin with him. There were tears of joy, of emotion. Kovac left as a legend.
Does Glasner do the diver again?
Adi Hütter, who Bobic brought from Switzerland from Young Boys Bern, took over for him. The Austrian led Eintracht to the 2019 Europa League semi-finals, where they only lost to Chelsea on penalties. His departure in 2021 – in the previous year the contract had only been extended to 2023 – cost Hütter a lot of sympathy. First he had stressed that he would not leave Eintracht before making use of an exit clause and going to Borussia Mönchengladbach. In the end, Hütter missed qualifying for the Champions League with the SGE. The supporters made the change theater around the head coach the main reason for this. On February 28, 2021, the coach said he wanted to stay in Frankfurt before his departure to Borussia became public shortly afterwards. At the end of the year he admitted that he would not do it again and understood that some people had been disappointed. According to Hütter, one should not forget that the people most important to him have all left – he meant Bobic, sports director Bruno Hübner and also chairman of the supervisory board Wolfgang Steubing.
After winning the semifinals against VfB Stuttgart, Oliver Glasner cheered exuberantly with the Frankfurt fans
Source: dpa/Tom Weller
Hütter, whose engagement in Mönchengladbach ended after just one year, is currently unemployed. Kovac, on the other hand, has been training at VfL Wolfsburg since the summer of 2022. And Olivier Glasner?
It is not yet clear what the successful Frankfurt coach will do in the future. “He comes across well, he’s very, very popular with the fans. He made the team even better. He won’t have to worry about the future,” fellow coach Funkel is certain. Glasner himself only has the final in mind: “I’m in the tunnel now. Everything that was before the tunnel doesn’t interest me at all. I can’t see anything left and right because that’s where the tunnel is.”
However, one thing is certain: If the Austrian manages the big coup at the end of his tenure at Eintracht Frankfurt, he will dive – and, as recently in the case of a big win, make the “Diver” in front of the fans.
