Dino Toppmöller joins Eintracht Frankfurt as coach

IEintracht no longer has to look for a new coach. Oliver Glasner’s successor has already been chosen. The Frankfurt sports director Markus Krösche heard it like this on Thursday: “We are very confident that we have found the right person and made a very good decision,” he said in an interview with the club. Krösche has not yet named the new Frankfurt soccer coach. It will be Dino Toppmöller. After two coaches from Austria (Glasner and Adi Hütter), the 42-year-old native of Saarland will be in charge of the coaching bench on the Main in the future.

Five days after the lost cup final against Leipzig (0:2), Krösche hoped that he would be able to “announce something soon” in the main personnel. The commitment of Toppmöller should now also be officially announced at the beginning of next week at the latest. The Hessians have long agreed with him. And Krösche can rely on the coach’s word. As sports director of RB Leipzig, he had guided Toppmöller to the Saxons in 2020; this was assistant coach of Julian Nagelsmann.

After Krösche left Eintracht a year later, both kept in touch. Now the Frankfurters only have to clarify the transfer fee for Toppmöller with Bayern Munich. At the German champions, he and his boss Nagelsmann were released at the end of March.

Toppmöller still has a contract in Munich until July 1, 2024. Bayern say they have an amount of 500,000 euros in mind. Eintracht, on the other hand, is aiming for half of the sum. Somewhere in the middle, both clubs will come to a conclusion. The negotiations are said to be in the final stage, and failure is hard to imagine.

Good flair and skill

For Krösche, the Frankfurt coach of the future is one who is ready “to follow Eintracht Frankfurt’s path and to further develop our playing style”. From his point of view, the coach must be able to make young players better. He has to rely on them and trust them. In this respect in particular, Glasner no longer met the expectations of the sports director.

Krösche got the impression that the former coach was too rigid in his thinking and not flexible enough, that Glasner was a bit trapped in his system. Talented young players like Dortmund loanee Ansgar Knauff, who Eintracht will now commit to for a transfer fee of almost five million euros, and Faride Alidou made no progress in their development under the Austrian. Toppmöller, on the other hand, is said to have a good sense and a lot of skill when dealing with talent.

As a replacement for Evan Ndicka, who refused to extend his contract, Eintracht signed 21-year-old Willian Pacho from Belgian champions Royal Antwerp as left-back for the new round. Cost: around nine million euros. And the 18-year-old midfielder Hugo Larsson will join Eintracht this summer from Malmö FF.

“Part of our philosophy is, on the one hand, to sign players who help us achieve our goals. But also signing young players in order to develop them further and enable them to take the next step in their careers,” says Krösche. If they would then develop faster and “want to take the next step, then we can generate transfer income. We need this path,” said the sports director.

Eintracht should play “offensive and courageous football” under the new coach Toppmöller. “Not Wild West, always with the necessary control,” as Krösche puts it. To do this, Frankfurt needed “courageous players with certain skills – a good mix of physique and technique, and of course speed. In certain areas,” demands the sports director, “we have to develop further because the demands placed on us and the perception of us have changed.” Krösche no longer believed Glasner capable of initiating this process and then implementing the specifications in a targeted manner. The sports director is certain that Toppmöller will get things moving – to the benefit and happiness of his new employer.