On Wednesday evening, Dieter Hecking will again declare a football match shortly after the final whistle. 1. FC Nuremberg meets VfB Stuttgart in the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup (18:00 in the F.A.Z. live ticker for the DFB Cup and Sky). 50,000 people will watch from the stands, the Max Morlock Stadium was sold out very quickly after the draw. Hecking would also like to sit in the stands, but he is not allowed to.
Hecking is now coach again, he never really wanted to be that again. After his unfortunate end as coach at Hamburger SV, he returned to 2020 FC Nuremberg in the summer of 1. To the club he had surprisingly left for Wolfsburg in the winter of 2012, because coach Hecking wanted to achieve more than the first division midfield.
In Nuremberg, many people resented him, but when he returned in 2020, joy prevailed. Dieter Hecking will no longer work as a coach, Hecking said at the time. He now wanted to be a sports director, to take care of the big picture at a club that had almost fallen into the third division a few weeks earlier. Only the tip of Fabian Schleusener's foot had prevented this in the sixth minute of injury time of the relegation second leg against FC Ingolstadt.
When the fan soul boiled over
Hecking was to rebuild the club. Together with the young coach Robert Klauß he succeeded surprisingly well. The "club" played first a carefree and then a hopeful season. In the third year it was supposed to get even better, but it got much worse.
A place in the upper third had proclaimed the sports director Hecking as a season goal. It became the relegation battle, once again. Hecking was dissatisfied and dismissed Klauß in the autumn, whose contract he had recently extended. It came as the successor of the Bundesliga experienced Markus Weinzierl, which turned out to be a misunderstanding in record time. After a 0:5 in Heidenheim, the fan soul boiled and Hecking decided to release the next coach.
One day later, he himself was back on the training ground, busy with the daily detailed work to somehow save the big picture. Or: The coach Dieter Hecking must now save the job of the sports director Dieter Hecking. "All in," said Thomas Grethlein, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Hecking is going to the bench with his return.
Either everything will be reasonably good – or Hecking has failed. Until the summer he is now coach again, then he should return to his post as sports director according to the plan. Not everyone in and around Nuremberg is really convinced of this plan.
The "club" plays football again
That perhaps not only the coaches were to blame for the failure, this view is no longer a minority opinion around the "club". The composition of the team, for which Hecking is responsible together with sporting director Olaf Rebbe, is considered at least unfortunate. The selection of Weinzierl, who did not fit the team with his style, is also considered a mistake of the sports board, who is still a learner in this function.
After all, Hecking is showing again that he is a good coach. Together with his important assistant Cristian Fiél, he lets the team play football again. And she gratefully accepts it after she had lost her identity through the ideas of Hecking's predecessors. The "club" is still in the middle of the relegation battle, but has regained hope due to the results and the style of play under Hecking.
Also important: The new approach has also increased the cohesion with the disappointed audience. "I'm very grateful for that," said captain Christopher Schindler on Friday evening. He had recently sealed the defeat against leaders SV Darmstadt 98 with an own goal, but had also experienced that the team had been bid farewell to the corner with applause.
"A lot of work"
This was certainly due to the upcoming cup match against VfB, with which many hopes are connected. But it was also due to the fact that the Nuremberg people in Nuremberg were again relieved of wanting to develop something like a game idea. "People can identify with that more than if we just try to brick something up at the back and then happily score a goal somehow," Schindler said.
Against VfB it won't help anyway to hope for anything. If they really want to make it to the semi-finals, then the Nuremberg team must show their best performance of this difficult season – and even then remain the outsiders. "There will be a lot of work ahead of us," said Hecking after the Darmstadt game with a view to VfB, "we need everything: mentality, passion and the audience."
Despite all the anticipation, the game against VfB is only a so-called bonus game. It will be more important on Saturday, when Karlsruher SC comes to the Max-Morlock-Stadion (13.00 clock in the F.A.Z. live ticker for the second Bundesliga and Sky). Then is again second league relegation fight everyday life, again struggle for existence. And down on the track, coach Dieter Hecking will sit on a chair and try to prevent the crash.