The twilight of the Mönchengladbach football gods began on Rose Monday. You can well remember the importance of this day, because on that Monday ten months ago the coach Marco Rose announced his departure. The team was immediately depressed. From then on, their football appeared as an expression of sadness.
The fact that they started the new season with an almost unchanged squad was not an advantage. Some players would have liked to change, but did not receive an offer from anywhere after the miserable second half of the season and in Corona times. So the decisive impulse should have come from the new coach. The Austrian Adi Hütter, however, is a quiet guy. He doesn’t scream, ignite a New Year’s Eve in the dressing room, and don’t parachute with the players. The Gladbachers could use just that now: adrenaline.
Since Borussia lost to Manchester City in the Champions League last sixteen at the height of their recent history in the spring and then said goodbye to coach Rose to Dortmund, their intrinsic motivation problem has become increasingly apparent. Intrinsic motivation is that reliable and effective drive that does not require any external impulse.
When Gladbach recently won 1-0 against Dortmund and 5-0 in the Cup against Bayern Munich, first the former coach’s new club and then Mia-san-Mia-Bayern provided motivational impulses. When Gladbach lost 4-1 in Cologne two weeks ago, 6-0 to Freiburg a week later and now 4-1 in Leipzig, when they conceded 14 goals within three defeats, the team looked as excited as an old koala collecting eucalyptus leaves . But wait: is that too mean? Is that doing the old koala an injustice?
Hütter can now prove that his theories are useful
Even after the sluggish start to the season, the sports director Max Eberl was asked whether the team might be sad because they are missing the adrenaline rush without the European Cup games they have cherished. Eberl replied sternly: Those who regret not being able to present themselves internationally should do all the more to change this. A good point. It didn’t work.
The new coach Hütter emphasizes again and again that he knows about the potential of the team, everyone saw it against Dortmund and Bayern. Hütter does not understand why the team is otherwise so stingy with their footballing charms. “What’s the catch?” He asked disarmingly recently in an interview with the FAZ and had no answer himself. Worse still, the question mark has grown since then.
“The eleven laws of motivation in top football” is the name of a book in which goal setting, mental strength and self-esteem, but also courage, risk and the team atmosphere are named as success factors. Hütter doesn’t even have to read the book. He wrote it himself together with a psychologist. Now he can prove that his theories are useful.