The hosts would have liked to avoid addressing the origin and occasion of the press appointment in the Bayarena. However, they could neither punish the mention of the name Erik Ten HAG there, nor could it be prevented from being talked about about the coaching resignation that was carried out last week. Therefore, Bayer Leverkusen’s sports director Simon Rolfes made the right path right after the greeting to create the topic from the agenda as soon as possible.
Okay, he admitted, it was “certainly not a ordinary situation” that you are sitting here again to present a new coach – after taking the predecessor into service two months ago. But “I already commented on the motives of the separation (from Ten HAG) last week,” said Rolfes and explained the coping with the past almost as quickly as he had started. Now it is about “creating the entry forward”. For this purpose, he looked at the man on his right side and warmly welcomed the next new boss in the coaching office, the former Danish national coach Kasper Hjulmand, 53.
:A guy who stands for clarity and dominance
Bayer Leverkusen will still find it on the thinned coaching market: The Dane Kasper Hjulmand will be the new coach, whose first trip to the Bundesliga had gone wrong.
It is more than obvious that Rolfes no longer wanted to talk about Hjulmand’s predecessor. As a sports manager, he suffered a defeat by dismissing his candidate, all the more because it means a speed record in 62 years of Bundesliga history. There are some people with expertise who believe that Rolfes quickly turned the defeat into a win because he quickly admitted his error and reacted appropriately with the lightning notice of Ten Hags. On the other hand, those voices in public discourse – not in their own club – can be heard, which remind the manager that his favorite should stay in business this time than a few months. Otherwise he himself becomes the subject of the discussions.
In this regard, it was instructive to experience that the first words that Kasper Hjulmand spoke on the podium were applied to the predecessor and therefore did not quite fit the desired agenda. He wanted to mention that he had “great respect for Erik Ten Hag” and appreciated him as a good colleague, Hjulmand sent ahead, and that was neither meant as an affront against Rolfes nor was it understood as such. But it gave an impression of the independence and self -certainty that are owned by the new coach.
Before and after Alonso, Leverkusen had tried to hire Hjulmand
The prospects that the second successor to the Great Xabi Alonso is better in the club and the team than the first are not bad. Bayer Leverkusen had previously tried to hire Hjulmand as a coach, in front of Alonso and after Alonso. Constant engagements stopped him from the promise, and this time again it hadn’t looked good when Rolfes called in Denmark and offered the post again. “When we started talking, I thought it didn’t work. I already had a job and was not on the market,” reported Hjulmand. The Danish Football Association, in which he was employed as a national coach until 2024, he supported as a consultant for the construction of a new campus. He was also committed to the donors not to simply give up the work.
After all, the candidate did not immediately categorically canceled. “Kasper was of course my first call because of the existing contacts,” said Rolfes: “In the beginning it didn’t look so good, but then he became a bit more optimistic every day.” After a few discussions, Hjulmand received the release of the association and the financier, “they were very nice and understanding and supported me a lot”. The Bayer manager did not reveal to whom Rolfes would have turned to if it hadn’t worked. The fact that it has now worked with the desired solution saves the club the inconvenience of entrusting the newly formed player squad to a man who only represents a compromise.
Just as the Bayer people rave about the “world male” and professionally experienced Hjulmand, the trainer also described his new club as an almost ideal address. “I think i can be myself here,” he said in English – in German he only wants to publicly comment in German after refreshing his knowledge: he had the feeling that he could realize his working style and the way of leadership, he emphasized. It is obvious that he doesn’t have much in common with German trainer authorities in the tradition of Rolf Schafstall or Felix Magath.
The new Leverkusen trainer presented itself binding and determined on Wednesday. You can consider him modern and a little intellectual, and if he also says he is not a trainer who shouts his players or employees, so you can tell him a subtle authority. When someone asked him if he wanted to prove something to the German after the commitment in Mainz, which was ended early ten years ago, he reacted cool: “I don’t do a job somewhere to prove something. My thing is football, that’s my passion.” There is not much time to teach the Leverkusen team his apprenticeship. The league game against Eintracht Frankfurt is on Friday evening. He already knows about this, says Kasper Hjulmand: “The situation is a bit like the national team: little time, hardly any training, hardly any tactical lessons – we will learn from game to game.”
