Proof of identity

It was Christmas Eve of 2020 when Mainz approached me.

The club was going through a very chaotic time. Of course, having spent many years there as a player, and as someone who still had a lot of contacts there, I followed every game. I could see they were in big relegation trouble.

I was doing well in the Austrian second division, at Liefering – the team for young players before they move up to play for Red Bull Salzburg – when the call came. Mainz wanted to hear about my plans, and to know if I could see myself joining them as head coach.

I thought that I was ready, but I was not convinced that the club was ready to go in the direction I thought necessary to bringing it back. I’m not talking about escaping relegation, either. I meant getting back to the identity that Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel had brought in during their time as manager.

I’m talking about culture, about playing style, about development. Taking the best players from the second division and developing them, doing the same in the youth department, and rebuilding the connection between the club, the fans and the whole region.

I thought that had got a bit lost, and I wasn’t sure that everybody at the club understood that this was more important than whether we stayed in the Bundesliga or not. It took some talks to convince me.

"it's the mixture of high demands and a great understanding of people that makes jürgen special"

I had been in my late 20s when the club called me the first time, in the summer of 2007. I’d spent a year at Borussia Mönchengladbach, but it hadn’t really worked out and I was looking for a different challenge. I was on the beach, and Jürgen Klopp called me. We made a good connection, and I just had this feeling that maybe this was something for me.

I didn’t know that much about Mainz, but Jürgen invited me to his house. His family was there, and he had bought cake! He had this kind of energy, a great sense of humour, and such a clear idea about how he wanted to take the club back to the first division after relegation the previous season. After that, there was no consideration for me. It was clear I had to go there.

Jürgen (below) wanted to play a high-intensity style of football; to put pressure on opponents, no breaks in the game. This was something different from what I’d experienced in my career, and it was very appealing. And then there was the way he was with his players. He demanded a lot from us, and wanted us always to go to our highest level, but he also has a great human side. It’s this mixture of high demands and a great understanding of people that makes him so special.

That season went to the last game, but unfortunately it didn’t go our way and we didn’t go up. Jürgen said goodbye after, I think, 17 years as player and manager at Mainz. For everyone at the club, I think there was a sense of ‘where do we go from here?’

But we were able to gather a really strong side of experienced players who had been in the first division and wanted to prove themselves again. I think we were the best side in the second league the next season, and deservedly won promotion.

We had been promoted with Jörn Andersen as coach, but four days before the start of the new season he was sacked. The club’s Under-19s coach was brought in to replace him. As a player, you start to think: “What’s going on here?”

"those five years with thomas were a game-changer for me when it came to coaching"

I didn’t know Thomas Tuchel before that, but I did know he’d won the German Under-19 championship. Mainz is still a small club in German terms, so this was quite the achievement. And it is still so clear in my mind, the first couple of days with Thomas leading the team.

We had a lot of players who had been in the top division before, including me, but he did things so differently. He took the assignment on as a young coach with a lot of courage, and a lot of energy. After the first two days, I think we knew we had a special kind of person, and a special kind of coach.

I played under Thomas (below) at Mainz for five years. Of course, you can talk about wins against Bayern Munich, qualifying for Europe or never being in a relegation spot across 170 games – but the highlight for me was the whole development. He took the club from being a team that was always playing against relegation to a secure and stable mid-table team. He filled the void that Jürgen left, redefining the club’s identity and taking it to the next step.

Those five years with Thomas were also a game-changer for me when it came to coaching. I had been quite clear that I wanted to try something different after my playing career. I felt that I needed to challenge different aspects of my personality, and I thought that would be difficult in such a specialised world as football.

But I had great talks with Thomas towards the end of my career, and he encouraged me to try it. He saw some aspects of my personality that he thought would fit well with coaching. So, after some soul-searching, I decided to see if, step by step, coaching could be something for me.

"we needed belief, and that meant getting results to get the players on board"

When I arrived at Mainz in January 2021, I was much more clear on how I wanted to go about the challenge outside the pitch than I was about the challenge on it. Of course, I had watched some games and had an understanding of what kind of team I was taking on. But I had more of an idea of how things were going to look in six or even 12 months, rather than in two weeks.

That might sound a bit crazy, but for me it was more about structure, identity and the DNA of the club than it was about how we would approach our first game against Eintracht Frankfurt. Maybe we could win that game, but it was the long run that was going to be decisive for us. The challenge was big, of course – the team had only six points from 14 games – but I was convinced that we had quality in the side.

One of the main problems we had to solve was conceding too many goals. The team had played with both a back four and a back five that season; in that first game against Frankfurt, we played a back four and lost 2-0.

I looked at the profiles of my centre-backs, and in Moussa Niakhaté and Jeremiah St Juste we had fast guys who were also able to defend against wide attackers. On paper, it looked the right thing to do to switch to a back five; Niakhaté and St Juste would be the outside centre-backs, and Stefan Bell – a tactically clever player with a good mentality, who I had played with – could play in the centre.

If we’d kept on losing, of course, that wouldn’t have made a difference. We needed belief, and that meant we needed results to get the players on board. In my second game, we drew away at Borussia Dortmund, and a week after that we came from behind to beat RB Leipzig at home. It wasn’t pretty football, but nor was it just a matter of grinding out results. We were showing that we had the football qualities to compete against the best teams. That was perfect for the ideas I was preaching.

"you can't prepare for half the team testing positive for covid the week before the new season"

Between the start of March and early May, we went on a run of nine unbeaten games that included my first win over Bayern Munich as a coach. Of course it is something special to beat them, but I look back at that game more for the way we played than the result. There were other games that proved more key to us not getting relegated – two weeks before that, for example, we scored an added-time winner in Köln – but the Bayern win was key for us in terms of it changing, going forward, how we played tactically. That was very important for us.

After we guaranteed our safety, of course the focus shifted to the next season. “Are they able to continue this good run?” people asked. “Have they reached their peak? What are we going to see now?”

Maybe the challenge was not harder than it had been when I walked into a relegation battle. After a half-season that had gone so well, though, it was still difficult. But I approached it with the same mindset as when I went in. It wasn’t just about winning the first game or being in such a position after 12 games or half of the season. It was about building on what we wanted our identity to be. What do we want our fans, and other clubs’ fans, and the other teams, to say about Mainz?

That said, the first game of the 2021/22 season, at home to RB Leipzig, was absurd! You can prepare for the whole pre-season to take on the new campaign, but you can’t prepare for half of the team testing positive for Covid the week before it. We went into the game with only 10 or 11 first-teamers available, and the rest of the squad from the Under-21s. Not only that, but my whole coaching staff was out too! I was the only one unaffected, so I called on an old teammate to sit with me on the bench.

It was a crazy week. Leipzig had finished second the previous season, and had no players out at all! But we were able to give the best answer to everything thrown at us, and ended up winning the game 1-0.

The fans certainly helped that day – and having them back that season, after missing them for so long, had a massive effect. It was the same throughout the whole league, of course, but for us the impact was even more extreme. We won 10 league games at home, and lost only two, which made it the best home season Mainz had ever had in the Bundesliga. Without the fans there, that wouldn’t have been possible.

"we don't have 25 players at a very, very high level, so our recruitment has to be top"

The season as a whole was a bit up and down, though. We finished eighth, but we weren’t consistent. Of course, playing away from home and having crowds against us was an issue, but the more important issue was an understanding of where we had come from.

Most of the players had been involved in relegation battles for two or three seasons, but then something happens when you find yourself much more secure in the middle of the table. You don’t become comfortable, as such, but if you don’t feel that pressure of relegation every single week then the mental side of the game changes.

At some points, it felt like we were better when we felt pressure from the table. After a defeat, we might have a home game and think that if we lose we might be getting into problems. Feeling that pressure, we would play well and win. The next game might then feel more like a bonus game; away from home, it would be great to win, but maybe if we lose it’s not that decisive. Getting past that was a big issue for us.

Of course, we don’t have the privilege, like the big clubs, of having 25 players at a very, very high level, so our recruitment has to be top. If we make too many bad decisions, or bring in too many guys who don’t function, we’re going to suffer more than the clubs that have much more money. And when a very important player is missing for a long time – as Jonathan Burkardt was in the 2022/23 season – it affects our game massively.

Fortunately, we had some other offensive players who were able to step up, and I was happy with the players we brought in – Ludovic Ajorque, for one, who arrived in January. We actually scored the most goals of any Mainz team in a Bundesliga season last year, which we are very proud of.

"doing things today to get somewhere else in one year is not the way i function"

On the other hand, it is not satisfying to see that we only got three points from six games against the clubs – Hertha Berlin, Schalke and Stuttgart – that finished in the bottom three. If you watch those games more closely, you can see our obvious problems. I think it’s normal for a club our size to like games where we have less possession and can be more the counter-attacking side – we beat Bayern, Leipzig and Bayer Leverkusen in 2022/23 – but against clubs with the same kind of individual quality, the games are different.

Of course, we want to develop being better in possession, but there is also an understanding that if you say yes to something in football, you have to say no to something else. The best teams in the world can control every phase of the game, but for us that is very difficult. There is a thin line between wanting to develop and try to get better in certain aspects, and accepting that you still need to work hard at and keep the things that make us stand out.

It’s always difficult to assess yourself, but my main focus when I came in was on bringing the club back to its roots. Jürgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel are the two managers who defined how Mainz developed: its identity, its structure, its place in German football. When I look back to my arrival in January 2021, I think we have come a long way. We are standing on our own two feet, knowing who we are – and knowing who we are not.

At some point, and this has been a theme of my history as both player and manager, I will think that I need a new challenge. But doing things today to get somewhere else in one year is not the way I function.

Right now, I’m proud of the steps we have made at Mainz. We have done some good things together, and I’m happy that I have been a part of the club’s journey. It’s been a really fun experience.