When Adi Hütter wakes up in the morning, he looks Gladbach football legend Allan Simonsen in the eye. It is by no means the case that the new coaches at Borussia Mönchengladbach are given, or rather placed, well-known sponsors from the great history of this club. The new Gladbach coach lives alone and only until he has found an apartment in the Borussia Football Hotel right next to the stadium. Each room there is thematically dedicated to a success from the club’s history. In Hütters Suite, the Uefa Cup victory in 1979 is remembered when Simonsen scored the goal of the 1-0 victory with a penalty in the final second leg against Red Star Belgrade. That’s why Simonsen’s photo is hanging on the wall here. This is how Hütter is reminded every morning of the history of his new employer.
Adi Hütter, 51, from Hohenems in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg was nine years old when Simonsen Gladbach scored to triumph in the Uefa Cup. As a professional footballer, Hütter was three times champion with the RB predecessor club Casino Salzburg and once a cup winner with the Grazer AK. As a coach, he is pursuing a career that recently culminated in Borussia Mönchengladbach paying 7.5 million euros to remove him from his contract at Eintracht Frankfurt. Hütter thought that was enormous. Shortly afterwards, FC Bayern Munich reportedly even paid twice as much for Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann. In the Bundesliga opening game this Friday, the two most expensive coaches in Bundesliga history will meet.
Hütter would never have believed in such a status of his own when he was brusquely fired in April 2012 from the hometown club and then second division SCR Altach. The dismissal has bothered him. But then his career really picked up speed. Within two years he led SV Grödig from the second Austrian league to the Europa League. In 2015 he won the Austrian double with RB Salzburg. In 2018 he made Young Boys Bern the Swiss champion. A year later he led Eintracht Frankfurt to the semi-finals of the Europa League and only failed there on penalties at Chelsea. Last season he almost brought Frankfurt into the Champions League, but after he had announced his move to Mönchengladbach in April, Eintracht only won two out of six games and missed the Champions League by one point.
The goals in Mönchengladbach are not even so lofty as that they dreamed of this Champions League, in which they at least reached the last sixteen with coach Marco Rose last season. In Rose’s first season in Mönchengladbach, daring sympathizers even thought the championship title was possible, but Borussia are currently far from such visions. Not even the fact that Hütter, as the co-author of two books, firstly knows “The eleven laws of motivation in top football” (2006) and secondly, “How to develop a championship team with team spirit” (2019) does not change that.
“We would like to play a role in the fight for Europe again,” says manager Eberl
Instead of maltreating the new coach with exaggerated sporting expectations, the Gladbach sports director Max Eberl particularly likes to praise Adi Hutter’s character traits. “He has good leadership, good communication and great empathy; he is a very relaxed person who knows exactly what he wants,” said Eberl in the “Sportschau”. The latter apparently also coincides with Eberl’s sporting goals. The sports director says: “We would like to play a role in the fight for Europe again. To reach the Champions League would be like a championship for Gladbach.”
Eberl complains that Gladbach conceded too many goals last season. He hopes for improvement under Hütter. “He attaches great importance to the defense and structure, but still wants to play offensively,” said Eberl.
If the coach is lucky, he can work with a squad that is about as strong as the one with which his predecessor Rose finished eighth last season. In the transfer period, which still lasts more than two weeks, midfielder Denis Zakaria, striker Alassane Plea and central defender Matthias Ginter are still considered possible departures in this order. In the game against FC Bayern, Hütter is missing the players Zakaria, Breel Embolo and Ramy Bensebaini due to injury or training deficit. That doesn’t stop the Austrian from saying: “I expect an attractive and spectacular game.”
Sports director Eberl says about the new coach’s less than favorable commitment: “We have developed a team and a game philosophy, and my most important task was to find a suitable coach.” Adi Hütter therefore has to join Gladbach’s history and still try to shape his own era. He becomes aware of this challenge every morning when he wakes up and looks Simonsen in the eye.