Alexander Nouri was once a coach at Werder Bremen and Hertha BSC. But then the ex-Bundesliga coach was forgotten in the industry. Now the 46-year-old is reinventing himself.
Former Bundesliga coach Alexander Nouri will devote himself to a hamburger chain instead of a four-man chain in the future. From the beginning of 2026, the former football coach of Werder Bremen and Hertha BSC will run two McDonald’s branches in North Rhine-Westphalia, as he told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. “I don’t go in there and say: I know how it works,” says Nouri: “I’m here to learn.”
The “SZ” story describes the scene of how Nouri’s first contact with his new team went: Before Nouri stands up in front of the people he wants to call his team from now on, he is tense. How will they react to him? Nouri takes a breath. 20 expectant looks are directed at him, the man in the middle of the room, dressed in jeans, a shirt and a jacket. “A warm hello from me,” Nouri begins, glad that everyone had come along. Then he introduces himself: 46 years old, family, two children, some experience in professional football. Maybe, he says, some people still know him from the Bundesliga, as head coach of Werder Bremen and Hertha BSC. Nouri gets louder. His goal has always been to be successful together and to develop something together.
According to the report, Nouri applied to become a franchisee and, among other things, cooked burgers himself during the training. “In the end, in both worlds it’s about taking people with you. In football it’s players, here it’s employees. But the basic principle is the same: you have to understand who is sitting in front of you, what drives them, what they need to perform,” he says about his new task.
Nouri was most recently Klinsmann’s successor at Hertha BSC in Germany
Nouri got his coaching license with national coach Julian Nagelsmann, was promoted from U23 coach to interim and then head coach at Werder in 2016, led Bremen almost to the Europa League, but had to leave in October 2017 after a long negative series. After a short stint in Ingolstadt, he became Jürgen Klinsmann’s assistant coach at Hertha BSC at the end of 2019 and took over the team after his sudden departure – but only for four Bundesliga games. In 2022, his last known engagement in the football industry in Greece ended after a few months.
The “SZ” writes that the German-Iranian started in the McDonald’s branches in Herzogenrath and in the neighboring Kohlscheid, “to leave behind what has defined his life so far. Win. Lose. Keep going anyway. Somehow it always goes on. Until at some point it couldn’t go on anymore, at least not in the way that coach Nouri had imagined. Which is why he had to ask himself: What to do if football doesn’t really want you anymore?”
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