When Matthias Kreutzer shouted the first words to the assembled sports press at Schalke on Tuesday afternoon at 2:04 p.m., he immediately chose the Ruhrpott jargon: “First of all, a warm ‘Glück Auf’ to everyone,” he said very calmly. The choice of words is no coincidence. Because FC Schalke’s new interim coach knows his way around the area.
The 40-year-old came to Gelsenkirchen in March 2019 as a video analyst and assistant coach. Crazy: Since then, Kreutzer has experienced eight head coaches and two relegations, from David Wagner to Thomas Reis. While his bosses came and went, Kreutzer always stayed. He can do a crisis.
Kreutzer is Schalke’s stand-up man
The expert has already proven this with the miners. He has already stepped in twice as Schalke’s emergency solution for one game each: in the 3-0 win in Ingolstadt in the 2021/2022 season and in Schalke’s 1-2 Bundesliga defeat at Hertha last fall.
The 40-year-old should now get the Royal Blues back on track. His mission will begin with the game at SC Paderborn on Friday evening. The table 15th. from East Westphalia invites you to a crisis summit against the second division 16. Schalke 04 (from 6.30 p.m. on SPORT1 in the LIVE TICKER).
But who is the man who is now stepping in as head coach for the third time in four years?
Kreutzer was born on December 23, 1982 in Erfurt. His sports economics studies were followed by an internship in scouting before he started working in game analysis at HSV at the age of 24. There, in 2007, he met Schalke’s coach of the century, Huub Stevens.
Stevens became a mentor for Kreutzer in Hamburg, who told the Schalke website: “As a coach at the time, Huub followed a certain way of preparing for games and recognized the advantages of game analysis even back then.”
Kretzer learned from Stevens and Knäbel
The 2007/2008 Bundesliga season was Kreutzer’s debut year. Head coach Stevens led the Rothosen around Nigel de Jong, Vincent Kompany, Rafael van der Vaart and homegrown Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting to fourth place in the Bundesliga.
But when Stevens left Hamburg for Eindhoven in June 2008 to be closer to his seriously ill wife Toos, the young Kreutzer stayed at HSV for nine more years. He developed from a video analyst to head of the youth performance center and assistant coach of the professional team.
Matthias Kreutzer (2nd from right) and Peter Knäbel (right) at an HSV test match during the 2014-15 Bundesliga season
At HSV, Kreutzer also met Peter Knäbel, the current Schalke board member.
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Knäbel served as Hamburg’s director of professional football between October 2014 and May 2016, when Kreutzer was still a video analyst. In April 2015, Knäbel personally stepped in as interim coach at Bundesliga Dino and worked with Kreutzer. By the way, HSV lost 0:2 against Wolfsburg and 0:4 in Leverkusen.
HSV interim coach Peter Knäbel lost 2-0 at home against VfL Wolfsburg in April 2015
Interesting: Knäbel actually has the UEFA Pro license, which Kreutzer still lacks. This means that Kreutzer is not allowed to be a professional trainer for longer than 15 working days.
However, if Schalke is unable to present a successor to the divorced Thomas Reis in the next 14 days – after all, one working day for interim coach Kreutzer has already passed – Peter Knäbel could even step in as coach.