“I cried a lot too”
Eberl criticizes Gladbach and breaks off contact
10/22/2022 10:57 am
In January, Max Eberl joins Borussia Mönchengladbach because he is physically and mentally exhausted. At first there was a lot of understanding – but that disappeared when his new employer Leipzig became known. For the first time, Eberl talks about his time off and gives deep insights.
In the first interview since his resignation as manager of Borussia Mönchengladbach and his time out due to exhaustion, Max Eberl sharply criticized his former club. “Someone spoke up with me who was mentally ill, who was ill – and they don’t believe him. That’s the problem!” Said the 49-year-old in an interview with the daily newspaper “Welt”. He had the impression “as if you didn’t really understand what I’m about – and above all: how I’m doing”.
He himself was “at peace,” added the future sports director of Bundesliga competitor RB Leipzig: “If I come back to the Gladbach stadium at some point, nobody can take away what I did there and what we achieved together. I can look everyone in the eye there. I don’t know if they can too.”
The reason for his departure was the intensity of his 23 years there, said the 49-year-old. He worked without a break, and his private life also suffered: his marriage broke up three and a half years ago after almost 25 years. “We footballers tend to tick things off quickly because of the tight schedule, but eventually the mountain just keeps getting bigger with everything that’s piled up.” In the end, the mountain was too big for him: “I was in a dead end.”
In particular, the open letter from the Gladbach fan project, in which, among other things, doubts were raised about Eberl’s honesty regarding his exhaustion, hit the manager very hard in view of these circumstances. He can understand the disappointment about his move to RB Leipzig of all places, “but not that I’m accused of lying and theatrical play – and that the club doesn’t immediately reject something like that”. He is “very disappointed that people I’ve worked with almost every day for 23 years don’t believe me. I can’t understand that”.
A journey “to myself” and a diary
The fact that contact with Gladbach had largely broken off in the meantime “hurt him at first”, but ultimately also helped him “to put an end to it”, said Eberl: “I worked for years and when I stopped working, it was over very quickly .” In Gladbach they would know “how I felt and how often I cried in conversations and said that I couldn’t do it anymore”. At the end of January, Eberl declared, sometimes in tears, that he was “broken” and “exhausted” and therefore “can no longer work”. He had to take care of Max Eberl as a person.
The former professional also reported on his trips abroad and the psychic journey “to myself”. He claimed “professional help” during his time off. “I cried a lot too.” At that time he also started to “write a diary. I still do that today”.
In August he felt “how football got me hooked again and how strength and energy came back”. Eberl does not see the fact that he is now in charge of the RB project, which he himself used to sharply criticize, as a big no-go: “In the end there is only one person you really have to be accountable for, and that is yourself. And I just have it keen to work for Leipzig.”