Following a busy season, Raphael Honigstein of The Guardian and Footbo was kind enough to talk with me and address a few questions I had about the end of the season and the start to the silly season. Which player(s) surprised you the most this season?  a) Misimovic. We knew he could play football, but […]

Wolfsburg has issued an official statement saying that Felix Magath will leave the club on June 30th of this year. Magath is bound for Schalke as has been rumored all week, although we still await confirmation from the Gelsenkirchen side. While many claims have been made by the press about Magath's salary demands, it wasn't […]

It appeared inevitable and now it's been confirmed as Borussia Möchengladbach fired trainer Jos Luhukay today in their wake of their defeat to Köln (and their fourth straight). After seven games, six of which they've lost, Gladbach sit at the bottom of the table with only three points. The team was perhaps too ambitious in […]

A look at Bayer Leverkusen's Bruno Labbadia concludes our The New Gaffer: Introducing... series this week. So far we've examined, in order: the journeyman, the company man, the stranger and, er, Martin Jol. Labbadia is a mix between a poor man's Jürgen Klinsmann and a poor man's Christian Bale (take a look!). In other words, […]

Fred Rutten isn't the only new Dutch manager in the Bundesliga, as ex-Tottenham Martin Jol took over the reigns of Hamburg earlier this month. It's been nearly 30 years since Jol's last appearance in Germany. He made 9 appearances for Bayern Munich as a midfielder in 1978/79 before returning to the Netherlands the next season. […]

The Deutsche Presse Agentur released a poll yesterday about predictions for the upcoming season. Bayern Munich was the unanimous favorite of Bundesliga coaches to repeat as champions. The most common reason given was the quality of Jürgen Klinsmann's squad. What follows is a hasty translation of what each of the 18 gaffers had to say […]

This week we make the short trip west on the A40 from Dortmund past Bochum to Gelsenkirchen, home to Schalke 04 and their new coach, Fred Rutten. Much like his new Ruhr rival, Jürgen Klopp, Rutten has been a one club man for almost his entire 30-year playing and coaching career, all with FC Twente […]

Continuing our series introducing the Bundesliga's newest gaffers is Jürgen Klopp now with Borussia Dortmund. For those of you at home wondering why Klopp was chosen to follow Klinsmann wonder no more. Was it to juxtapose the long-serving Klopp with the journeyman Klinsmann? Was it because both were football commentators for the German public television […]

July 1st saw the formal beginnings of five coaches' tenures at the helms of Bundesliga clubs. Over the next several weeks every Thursday we'll introduce these men to you. Our series of profiles begins with Bayern München's Jürgen Klinsmann, striker par excellence and noted diving enthusiast. We detail the man, his plan, his challenges, and […]