Bennet Wiegert (41) won the Champions League as a player with SC Magdeburg in 2002. 21 years later he repeated the feat as coach of the club and caused a big sensation with his handball players when Magdeburg prevailed in the final after extra time against the big favorites from Kielce.
Ask: Mr. Wiegert, we are here at the Schäfer stables, a few kilometers from the gates of Magdeburg. Why do you like being here so much?
Bennett Wiegert: That’s the place that distracts me, because handball isn’t talked about much here and I’m not just perceived as a handball coach here. I have tasks here that I might not be given anywhere else. “Benno, fuck off.” And then I’ll take care of the horse manure. Sometimes you don’t think about a game or anything for a short time. If you have a place where the family, the children are very, very happy, then that makes you happy too. We have had a family horse here on the farm for three years now.
Ask: Have you ever tried it?
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Wiegert: No. Our mare is rather small, so I wouldn’t want to put my 100 kilos on her.
Ask: You don’t look like you’ve weighed 100 kilos.
Wiegert: I might have a little less now. I made some dietary changes at the end of the season. But at the beginning of the season I was already at 98, 99 kilos.
Ask: What did you change?
Wiegert: I gave up sweets. My problem was that the team always chooses the player of the game internally – and he gets a bag full of candy. And the bag is in the cabin all week long. And then what do I do? I run into the cabin and smack the candy bag over the head. Just doing without it and eating differently has really brought me ten kilos. But it was also necessary. Eight years ago I said to my assistant coach Yves Grafenhorst that if we both want to become coaches, we have to convey professionalism and look like it. If we say: the players should drink little alcohol, we can’t be the first to have a bottle of beer stuck to our necks. We can’t say: You mustn’t be overweight and then stand on the sidelines with a blanket yourself.
Wiegert is obviously in good shape
Source: dpa/Marius Becker
Ask: Do you still drink alcohol at all?
Wiegert: No, not for eleven years. Everyone asked me: what happened? Lost driver’s license? The reason was: My wife could no longer drink alcohol during pregnancy. I said I’ll take part. At some point she drank wine again, I said I didn’t need it.
Ask: With your club, SC Magdeburg, you won the Champions League as a player in 2002 and now as a coach. What was nicer?
Wiegert: I can’t compare that. I was naive as a player. I won the Champions League relatively early on. I had a great team with many world stars around me, and you assumed: next year we’ll win it again. It won’t be the last time. And that’s why you didn’t value it like you do now at 41. That there are so many great coaches around the world who may never have the privilege of holding up this trophy and are still great coaches. Certainly better than me in certain things. Maybe then I really got a bit of luck.
Ask: National coach Alfred Gislason said in SPORT BILD that you created a monument for yourself by winning the Champions League…
Wiegert: Come on …
Ask: What does a statement like that evoke in you?
Wiegert: Of course it makes me proud. I have a really close relationship with him. Before the final, he suddenly stood next to me during the run-in and hugged me again and told me to stay cool. I said that I’ve never been as cool as I was at that moment. When Alfred says something like that, I know he means it. But that brings us to the cult of personality. I thought the statement by Heidenheim’s coach Frank Schmidt was cool: “Stop the monument and that shit, they’ll pee on it at some point.” Better build a statue for the team, but take me out of there.
Perhaps Wiegert will eventually succeed national coach Alfred Gislason (M.)
Source: pa/Norbert Schmidt
Ask: Why so humble?
Wiegert: I can already estimate very well what teams like Paris, Veszprem and Co. have invested over the years to maybe be able to win the CL. Then we come one weekend, are in the final again after 21 years and march off Rome like the Gauls and take this thing with us because everything went well. It’s also a Cinderella story that everyone wants in sports. And then people in Magdeburg approach me and say: Let’s not wait another 21 years. I would like to reply: Folks, it’s possible that we won’t experience that anymore.
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Ask: Could you imagine being the coach of SC Magdeburg for another 21 years?
Wiegert: A clear no. I have a clear deal with my family and I don’t want to miss the jump. 50 is the magic limit for me. I have to reevaluate whether it’s still right to stand on the line.
Ask: Or become a national coach at 50?
Wiegert: Who knows? We can definitely talk about that again. It doesn’t have to be the national coach. There are other interesting nations too. In any case, I can imagine when I’m 50 that I won’t have this weekly point stress anymore. At the moment I still need this stress.
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Ask: Germany could soon need a new national football coach for the 2024 home European Championship – would the job appeal to you?
Wiegert: No not at all. What the boys have to endure in terms of public, social pressure in football, I’m happy to be active in handball. I didn’t just take part in the sunny times in Magdeburg, the discussion as to whether I was the right person. But then I also thought to myself: I am not the tree on which every dog lifts its leg. You have to be solid as a person to do that. But that’s a completely different dimension in football.
Ask: In what way?
Wiegert: I was lucky enough to meet Oliver Glasner at the SPORT BILD Awards. Last season he had to take the blame for things for which he was not responsible. Then I just thought: Oh, shit. Luckily we have the English structure in Magdeburg. I’m a trainer and sporting director and rightly have to take the blame. The difficult phase in Magdeburg challenged me the most. Don’t get me wrong: I also want to get back into this phase because it made me better. To challenge myself, to say: I’ll show you all. I have the mindset to go out, we as a team against everyone.
“Stop this garbage!” – Glasner’s outburst in the video
Eintracht Frankfurt’s coach Oliver Glasner is on edge after the defeat against Hoffenheim. The Austrian snapped at a journalist and then talked himself into a rage. Watch the video of the outrage here.
Ask: Together with your team.
Wiegert: Naturally. It was always important to me that the dressing room follows me. I hate the personality cult because it remains a players game, not a coaches game. In the Bundesliga, without the quality of the players on the sidelines, I’m just a jumping jack. As a youth coach, I gave speeches where I left the dressing room and said to myself: What a great guy you are, they have to tear down the hall now. And then I didn’t even take a quarter of the guys with me because they didn’t really understand my values. At first I wanted players who all ticked like me. bullshit! The art is to pick up 17 different characters.
Ask: On the sidelines they sometimes romp around quite wildly.
Wiegert: There are probably very few referees who say outside the game: Wiegert is a complete idiot. They know that I have pressure to succeed and that I am emotional. But that’s over after the final whistle. The handball fan who perhaps sees every one of our games and sees me jumping around like a devil might think: This guy has a quirk. I have to put my shoes on. Finally, I have to go to bed at night and be at peace with myself. But when I stop running around on the sidelines, I’m not me anymore.
Ask: You are not only a coach, but also a sports director. Not afraid that the stress will eat you up?
Wiegert: I don’t question whether all of this is healthy. Right now I feel like I need the stress. If I stop at some point, it will be extremely difficult to find the transition to rest.
Always energized on the sidelines – Bennet Wiegert
Source: dpa/Ronny Hartmann
Ask: Not afraid of burnout?
Wiegert: There are many telling me to be careful. That’s why I did a test and it was clear: I’m so far away from burnout. The first symptom of burnout is that nothing affects you anymore; plus listlessness, insensibility. As long as I’m angry about something, I don’t have burnout. I feel the anger too often.
Ask: How is your family dealing with this?
Wiegert: The deal we made at home: As a family, we have to put everything behind success. If we have a birthday, then the training plan comes first. If the training plan calls for training at the weekend because we are successful at it, I will not subordinate the plan to school enrollment or baptism. Then you have to go there without me.
Ask: Her bushy beard has been greatly shortened.
Wiegert: Thank God. Wasn’t bearable anymore.
Ask: Did you grow that out of superstition?
Wiegert: Naturally. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a small tendency towards autism and that I have certain quirks. It’s much, much easier for me to change things during bad times. That’s why bad phases have been extremely good for us at SC Magdeburg. It was much easier for me to change things with a snap of my fingers. If something is going well, I try to change as little as possible and stick to the routines as much as possible. Never change a winning system. And the beard was one. Whoever shaves loses. We hadn’t lost a game in an extremely long time, so the beard was still there. I was really close to saying: Hey, I’ll have it cut again before the Final Four. Not losing weight, but a little. Because now it’s starting to look unkempt. It annoys me. It itches. And then my eleven-year-old daughter calls: You can’t do that. Then I was out.
Enthusiastic reception in Magdeburg – the team celebrated the Champions League title in the city with thousands of fans
Source: dpa/Heiko Rebsch
Ask: Last question: Jürgen Klopp, Isabell Werth or Dirk Nowitzki, with whom would you like to have a beer – and why?
Wiegert: I’ll take all three. Just like I always want everything in life (laughs). Thank God I know all three people and each of them has something very special. For example, if Jürgen Klopp would give me the opportunity to sit in on him. Getting to know Isabell Werth’s stud, how calm you have to be to work with horses. And I’m just a Dirk fan. If I stood in front of him, I would say: It’s nice to meet you.
this interview was written for the sports competence center (WELT, SPORT BILD, BILD) and first published in SPORT BILD.
