Hoffenheim coach sacked
February 9, 2012
German top flight soccer team Hoffenheim parted ways with head coach Holger Stanislawski on Thursday, hours after the club crashed out of the German Cup quarterfinals against lower league opposition.
Hoffenheim dropped out of the race for the DFB Pokal - the side's only realistic chance at silverware this season - on Wednesday night, losing 1-0 against second division visitors Greuther Fürth.
42-year-old Stanislawski had sat in the Hoffenheim hotseat for just eight months, having joined from Hamburg side St. Pauli in July 2011. Stanislawski secured shock promotion to the Bundesliga for St Pauli, but was unable to prevent them from sliding back down into the second division last season.
"We value Holger Stanislawski as a person and as a skillful trainer," club manager Ernst Tanner wrote in a Thursday press release. "But after long, constructive discussions we have reached the conclusion that it is in the interest of everybody involved to end our work together."
"The most recent sporting developments are most certainly the decisive factor," Tanner also said.
Successor in the pipeline?
Hoffenheim sit a relatively respectable eighth in the Bundesliga table, but are well adrift of the top seven sides currently competing for six spots in European competition next season. Stanislawski's side has not won a league match since December 12 and lost a pair of key forwards in the January transfer window.
Former Hertha Berlin coach Markus Babbel, who was sacked on December 18 after an acrimonious war of words with his former employers, is considered the hot favorite to take the reins at Hoffenheim. Several German news outlets are reporting that private talks have already begun, with a decision probable in time for Hoffenheim's league match in Bremen on Saturday afternoon.
Hoffenheim, owned by Dietmar Hopp, the co-founder of German software giant SAP, entered the German top flight for the first time in 2008. The little team with big financial backing, representing a village of just 3,000 people, took the league by storm in the early going but has sunk back into relative mediocrity since.
msh/mz (dpa, SID)