Why Mainz 05 relies on Jan Kirchhoff as U-19 coach

Not all the moving boxes have been unpacked yet, but everything went pretty quickly when we moved from the VfB Stuttgart youth academy to the Wolfgang Frank Campus on Mainzer Bruchweg. From now on a new environment and a new team – Jan Kirchhoff hardly had any time to slowly get used to his new job as U-19 coach of FSV Mainz.

Because of the professional crisis and the developments it triggered, which temporarily promoted U-23 coach Jan Siewert to the Bundesliga and Benjamin Hoffmann, master coach of the A-juniors, to the regional league team, a quick solution was necessary.

At least the city and club are probably still familiar to the 33-year-old, even if a lot has changed since the summer of 2013. At that time, the Frankfurter, who emerged from the Mainz youth team, was facing a great career; he had already signed a three-year contract with FC Bayern Munich in January. On the one hand, leaving the 05er was a difficult decision, says Kirchhoff.

Nothing he had to think about for long

With them he had a coach in Thomas Tuchel, under whom he had become German champion with the A-Juniors four years earlier and who had taken him, as well as Stefan Bell and the later world champion André Schürrle, to the professionals. What’s more: Kirchhoff, who alternated between central defense and defensive midfield, was Tuchel’s favorite student.

“I will always set up my team so that ‘church’ has a place in it,” said the coach. The fact that he only made 57 championship appearances during his three first league years with Rheinhessen was not due to his nonchalant manner, which caused him to lose some of the balls he had just won all too casually, but to many injuries. He was only spared from this in the 2011/12 season, in which he played 29 games.

On the other hand, going to Munich wasn’t something Kirchhoff had to think about for long. “I have the courage to take on such challenges,” he says. And moving to the record champions, who had signed Pep Guardiola for the new season, “was the greatest thing possible at the time. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to work with the best coach in the world.”

Jan Kirchhoff (left) played 64 times for the Mainz 05 first team. : Image: dpa

This prospect outweighed the danger of rarely being featured in the Bavarian star ensemble. “I wasn’t afraid to jump into the deep end and compete with the best,” he says. “The appeal of the task convinced me. And I am someone who looks into the future and sees opportunities instead of obstacles and problems.”

But the 1.95 meter man’s injury misery continued. In Munich, during the loan to Schalke, where he tore his syndesmosis ligament on the second day and was out for four months, later in England at AFC Sunderland and Bolton Wanderers. Kirchhoff admits that these setbacks sometimes drove him to the brink of despair.

“It started in the U19s. As a young player, it was even easier to say to yourself that you would invest everything in rehab to get back on the pitch.” He then played for Magdeburg and Uerdingen in the third division, but when he realized that he could no longer live up to his own standards and was no longer an active professional football player in his late 20s.

Fits into the scheme

Kirchhoff began his new career as co-coach of the C youth team at VfB Stuttgart’s youth performance center. “I didn’t want to be handed a handout, so I didn’t want to get the job just because of my name and my past,” he explains why he didn’t interview in Mainz. He most recently served as head coach of the U17s for the Swabians.

Until Volker Kersting called. The director of the Mainz squad factory, who had brought Kirchhoff to Mainz as a player from Eintracht Frankfurt, didn’t have to do much convincing. “An opportunity like this doesn’t come along every day,” says the returnee. “I missed Mainz as a home, I missed being part of a club that is so family-like and that is defined by a culture that I really like.”

It is quite possible that the new path will sooner or later lead him to the Bundesliga, as was the case with five former 05 coaches: Thomas Tuchel, Martin Schmidt, Sandro Schwarz, Bo Svensson and Jan Siewert were all for the U19 and /or the U23s were responsible before they made it to the top. Kirchhoff fits this pattern with his past.

Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1 Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated: Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1

But first he wants to develop a lot of things further in the place where Tuchel once influenced him: “with his leadership and enthusiasm for uniting people in a “we”. In addition to the content, he tries to take over from Guardiola “that he doesn’t let the players see football as work.” On the pitch, Kirchhoff’s aim is to control what’s happening. “I don’t like it when a game consists of chance,” he says, knowing full well that football is largely a game of chance. “For me it’s about reducing these coincidences.”