Christian Heidel returns to Mainz and saves the club from relegation together with proven forces. Mathematically, that is a miracle. A miracle that it shouldn’t have happened at all.
No, Christian Heidel didn’t really feel like giving the Messiah in Mainz, the bearer of hope. So: not at all. “A comeback was never part of my personal life planning,” said the sports director of 1. FSV Mainz 05 in an interview with RTL / ntv. “If someone had told me on December 1st that I would be in Mainz three weeks later, I would have said they were completely crazy. I really didn’t want that, I told those responsible in the first conversation that it wasn’t for me at all Subject is. ”
In December there are really many good reasons to stay as far away from Mainz as possible. The table situation? Hopeless, just before Christmas only six own points and at least four points behind the relegation rank, after the end of the first half of the season there were seven points, the gap to 16th place was a whopping eight points. Only three teams collected fewer points in their first 17 games in the 58-year history of the Bundesliga.
Much worse, more painful for Heidel must have been the alienation of the fans, the city and the team. More lustful than hapless appearances, a player strike that was moderated away with little transparency, without it becoming very clear what fueled this previously unthinkable escalation in Mainz – but coach Achim Beierlorzer then cost the job with a short delay. Mainz 05 was Schalke 04 in red and white at the end of 2020 – only for almost two decades without any disaster. A carnival club in the Depression.
Heidel’s cancellation should at least have caused panic among those responsible from the board of directors and supervisory board. Two days before Christmas, supervisory board chairman Detlev Höhne and club boss Stefan Hofmann appear in front of the cameras for a short-term press conference. The economically successful, absolutely worthy, but ultimately hapless sports director Rouven Schröder had previously submitted his resignation, Beierlorzer’s successor Jan-Moritz Lichte was only a coach on call after a disastrous cup against the second division VfL Bochum. When Hofmann and Höhne opened, football Mainz was still hoping for the announcement of the liberation blow: Heidel is coming back, brings Bo Svensson, who has become a coach in Mainz and is immensely respected – and thus ushering in the resurrection of the club shortly before the festival. It happened: nothing. It became increasingly clear that nothing is clear, especially not with Heidel.
“It just wasn’t my plan”
Even more frightening: There was the vague Heidel Plan, but no Plan B. Quite a few observers perceived the appearance as a cry for help. For Heidel, too, it means pressure that the club lay his fate at his feet. “Yes, I have to say that clearly. Because then it can quickly be said, ‘He didn’t help us.’ I had time, but it just wasn’t my plan. I had completely different ideas. ” Those responsible approached him again and again, says Heidel, “at some point it went in the direction of ‘You have to help now, otherwise …'” And then you start thinking about your little baby, about what happened many years ago started with Mainz 05 and me. Then I talked to the family, who were absolutely thrilled – in quotation marks. At some point I said: I don’t want it to say “We asked Christian for help and he just refused”. ”
Didn’t he: “Over Christmas I sat there and looked who I could do it with. I had decided that I would do it when I got the people. The condition for me was that Bo said yes and that Martin Schmidt said yes says. I had the feeling that it was a team that I know well, that I trust and that we might have another chance with. ” In addition to Bo Svensson, the trainer, Martin Schmidt, the ex-trainer and future sports director, with whom Heidel had sounded out the joint rescue mission for four hours on Christmas Eve, also said yes.
On January 3rd, Mainz 05 announced the return of Christian Heidel, who had left “his” club in 2016 after three decades for Gelsenkirchen. It was – sorry for the pathos – the return of hope to a football Mainz that looked like sedated.
Heidel wasn’t always the savior
Heidel had announced at his press conference that he was “not the Savior, I am not the Messiah. In the past, everything was not optimal with me either.” Heidel was really not always the savior, the hero, the Mainz messiah. In the mid-nineties, Mainz 05 was a reliable antics producer, a second division team from the lower quality segment. Coaches came and went, delivering embarrassments like Eckhard Krautzun, who unceremoniously rededicated the “Bruchweg” – the home of FSV Mainz 05 – to the Mainz “Bruchsee”.
And Heidel certainly did his part, once he humiliated the pale almost-promotion trainer Reinhard Saftig as haphazard in front of the cameras. The constant class struggle had made Mainz 05 tough, rough. And Heidel in the meantime worn down: When things got too wild again, his son was threatened at school, Heidel threw it out, but returned a few months later. He can’t help it and in Mainz, yes, the rest of it is history. Success story.
“Christian Heidel, you are the best man”, the fans said goodbye to him in 2016, their howling manager god, under whom one went from the gray second division to the radiant carnival club, reached three European competitions and once even a Bundesliga start record of seven wins in Series produced. “You are the heart and soul of this club,” said Jürgen Klopp from Liverpool from the display board.
With Jürgen Klopp, Heidel had once in an act of desperation promoted a clever, always burning, but not exactly elegant professional to head coach in 2001, who first gave the club relegation in the second division and quickly an identity, then a city, later a whole football world for took himself. And he promoted an A youth coach named Thomas Tuchel to the coaching chair a few days before the start of the season, which the promotion coach Jörn Andersen had to vacate. The Norwegian had strayed too far from what Mainz 05 wanted and wants to stand for. In Mainz, Heidel had Thomas Tuchel followed by the Dane Kasper Hjulmand, who did not have sustained success on the Rhine but is now his country’s national coach. He later installed Martin Schmidt, who led the small club into the Europa League. So now Svensson, Heidel’s “The One or None” trainer.
“Something has happened again”
The Dane, brought in from FC Liefering from Austria for a small transfer fee, struck, after three defeats at the beginning Mainz 05 almost played a Champions League second round, added 29 points to the miserable 7 first round points, beat FC Bayern, Leipzig And most importantly: Did the rivals Arminia Bielefeld and 1. FC Köln each take 14 points, Werder Bremen 16 and FC Schalke even 20. Schalke 04 in red and white? Dark shadows of the past. At the end of Schmidt’s “coolest relegation battle of all time”, the final sprint was a comparatively sovereign relegation.
“The key moment was the first week, when Bo managed to gain trust in the team and suddenly everyone had the feeling that something was still possible here,” said Heidel looking back. “After two training sessions with Bo, the team felt that there was someone who knew what he was talking about, the training was also completely changed. Bo is very tough, against himself and also when dealing with the team, but he takes the players also in the arm. “
With a once-dead team that hardly any fan wanted to identify with, Svensson saved the club from relegation – and led a football city out of depression back to optimism. “We held talks with the players, there wasn’t a single one in which you had the feeling that someone didn’t understand the importance of Mainz 05. Something has come about again, and the people in the city felt that too. Everyone played for Mainz 05, that was certainly a key to success, “enthuses Heidel. Relegation was certain after 32 games in Mainz, after FC Augsburg’s 2-0 win against Werder Bremen prevented them from entering the second division.
Klopp’s euphoric SMS
The realization of the miracle was not only inspiring in Mainz. “If I know it correctly, Jürgen’s text message came a few minutes after the end of the game. I’m always amazed at the pictures he sends me and where he got them all from. I don’t even know how it works,” laughs Heidel. “A lot of” hurray “and” clapping hands “, I think there was a trophy. That was not played either, Jürgen Klopp is still feverishly with Mainz 05. This is his home here and I know that he is huge about staying up was pleased. ”
Klopp, the world coach, the Champions League winner, has Mainz in view and of course the club icon is still present in Mainz. As a living memory, but not as an eternal benchmark for everything that followed: “I’m always sorry: When we have a good coach in Mainz, he is always compared to Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel,” said Heidel about his new coaching coup, which is now in the tradition of the two major coaches.
“This was a stroke of luck for Bo: He trained under both of them. The potential is there, but I don’t want to give my coach, who has been with me for six months, any rucksacks.” The most important thing, however, is “that Bo Svensson stays Bo Svensson. He is a young coach who can develop and develop here. Tuchel became Tuchel, Klopp became Klopp. I think Bo enjoys that here too, because he can feel it. He’s already a very good coach and he can become a much better coach with the experience of his work. ” Klopp remains Klopp, Svensson remains Svensson – and Mainz is Mainz again. And Christian Heidel actually delivered the miracle to order.
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