Dieter Hecking acts. Coach Robert Klauß has to go after the crash of 1. FC Nürnberg this season. Who will now take over the crisis "club"?
Nuremberg (dpa / lby) - Dieter Hecking felt compelled to act. After the crash of 1. FC Nuremberg this season, the sports director released coach Robert Klauß. A new coach is to lead the "disorientated" team, as Hecking described it, back up.
"We regret this decision, but it was unavoidable. Robert has done a good job here for more than two seasons. However, the development in the past few weeks has not been satisfactory at all," Hecking explained the decision on Monday one day after frustrating 0:3 in the 2nd Bundesliga at Karlsruher SC.
"The way the team played in Karlsruhe and in a few games before that was unacceptable. We would all have been happy if we could have continued on our path of continuity with successful games," said Hecking further. The appearance made him “rethink”.
The former Bundesliga coach and his sports director Olaf Rebbe saw no other way than to separate after the alarming drop in performance this season. Late on Sunday evening, Klauss was relieved of his duties. "The disappointment was palpable," said Hecking of the young coach. It is the second dismissal of the coach in this second division season, Uli Forte had previously had to go to Arminia Bielefeld.
Klauss, whose contract was extended beyond the 2022/23 season in May, said goodbye to the team on Monday. The 37-year-old moved to Franconia as an assistant coach from RB Leipzig in the summer of 2020. In its first season, the "club" finished eleventh. Afterwards, the traditional club even played for a long time for promotion, but then only finished eighth.
It was easy to "always identify the coach as the weakest link," said captain Christopher Schindler after the bankruptcy in Karlsruhe, and saw the players as responsible: "I don't think it's the coach's fault. The problem is on the pitch, we are responsible." That looks similar to Hecking, but drew a slightly different conclusion.
For the time being, the two assistant coaches Ersan Parlatan and Frank Steinmetz will look after the team, which has fallen to 14th place in the table. Then who takes over?
Klauß prevailed over Dimitrios Grammozis in a casting more than two years ago. Grammozis has been without a club since his early release from FC Schalke 04, but according to Hecking he is not "in the draw."
The sports director has long since had his favorites for the successor. "We had several candidates, but we decided on one," Hecking said at a media round. "I have someone in mind who we are also in talks with." The club also wants to come to an agreement quickly with the external solution, it should be on the sidelines next Sunday (1.30 p.m.) in the home game against Holstein Kiel.
"We are working flat out on the successor," emphasized Hecking, for whom even a rescuer mission is "completely out of the question". "We're trying to come up with a solution as soon as possible." The new player must give structure to the currently "disoriented" team. "We need someone to stabilize the whole structure again," said Hecking, describing the requirement profile.
The Nuremberg team is now even more challenged. "It was a bottomless performance from us," said Captain Schindler in Karlsruhe. He sees an urgent need for action: "We keep talking about things, but some people don't seem to get it. The time for talking is over at some point. We have to be resilient. It's a matter of attitude and has nothing to do with the quality of football."
Hecking rated the fact that the captain asked the mentality question as "not a good sign. You can't learn mentality, you either have it or you don't have it." So there's a lot of work waiting for the new coach.
