“I’m not an animator”
Stunk’s departure from Middendorp takes club completely by surprise
08/17/2023 11:51 am
The game is lost and then SV Meppen also loses its coach and sports director. With a settlement with his players, Ernst Middendorp resigns from the third division relegated team. The club was “completely surprised” by the announcement in an interview.
Regional football club SV Meppen has confirmed the resignation of its prominent coach Ernst Middendorp. The board was “completely surprised” by the decision, according to a statement from the third division relegated team. Nobody expected that, said sports director Heiner Beckmann. For the time being, the previous Middendorp assistant Steffen Puttkammer will lead the training of the Meppen team. The 34-year-old was already a player at the club from 2017 to 2023.
The former Bundesliga coach Middendorp had announced his resignation as coach and sporting director of the Emsländer on Wednesday evening after a 1-2 defeat at SSV Jeddeloh II and justified it in clear terms. “I told the team that I’m not cut out to make amateurs work. Basically, we don’t manage to act professionally. It’s not my world. I don’t work 15 hours a day to end up doing anything to animate. I’m not an animator,” said the 64-year-old of the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.
“I left the cabin”
You have to “want to win”, instead “bullshit” happened, “that’s not what you want, what you have to have as a level”. The team behaved “silly, unprofessional” and “amateurish” in Jeddeloh, he said after the second defeat in the third game of the Regionalliga Nord. “With the potential we have on the field, you have to leave the pitch as a clear winner,” said Middendorp. The “esprit” was missing, the “ultimate biliousness”. Meppen had won the opening match against SV Drochtersen/Assel 1-0.
“I stopped looking at how his team reacted to the resignation,” said Middendorp. “I left the cabin and am now sitting in the bus,” the 64-year-old ended the interview.
Middendorp coached Arminia Bielefeld three times in his career and led the club from the regional league to the Bundesliga in the 1990s. After stints in South Africa, China and Thailand, among others, he took over SV Meppen in March, but was unable to prevent relegation from the 3rd division despite a strong final spurt.
In the summer he also took on the duties of sports director. He put together the squad he criticized so severely when he left.