2024-05-03 04:51:55
Fabian Hürzeler is on the verge of promotion with St. Pauli.Bild: www.imago-images.de
What began a few years ago in a small town in Bavaria could lead to the legendary promotion with FC St.Pauli on Friday. Fabian Hürzeler, whose father comes from Schaffhausen, is one of the greatest coaching discoveries of recent years. Who is this 31-year-old wonderwuzzi? A portrait.
François Schmid-Bechtel
Pipinsried. Can’t do anything with it? Not too tragic. It’s a small nest. 500 inhabitants. More of a hamlet than a village. Between Munich and Augsburg. There are musicians and a church choir. And there is the football club. Not a beacon of German football. But if you deal with one of the most hyped coaches in Germany at the moment, there is no way around Pipinsried. And this coach has a Swiss passport: Fabian Hürzeler.
The father comes from Schaffhausen, the mother from Germany. Hürzeler lives in Houston, Texas for the first two years. Then in Freiburg. When he was five, the family and their four children moved to Munich, where his parents ran a dental practice. Today Hürzeler lives at the other end of Germany. In Hamburg.
FC St.Pauli is on the verge of promotion.Bild: www.imago-images.de
But he is known throughout the country. On the one hand, because as a coach with FC St.Pauli he is about to be promoted to the 1st Bundesliga – which is a sensation given the competition with Schalke, Hamburger SV, Hertha Berlin and Hannover. On the other hand, because Hürzeler is only 31 and therefore the youngest coach in German professional football.
Hürzeler caught the football bug early on. He is considered a promising talent at Bayern Munich. He has 21 international matches for Germany up to the U19 level. But the leap to becoming a professional is too big for him. At FC Bayern, as well as later at Hoffenheim or at 1860 Munich. Hürzeler was 23 when he came to the bitter realization: “Despite the many sacrifices, it won’t be enough to make it big,” he says. «It was really hard. But it came from within. That’s why it felt right to me.” Turning away from football was not an option for Hürzeler.
Hürzeler started coaching at the age of 23
And this is where Pipinsried comes into play. When looking for a new trainer, you end up with the completely inexperienced, only 23-year-old Hürzeler. Maybe some people in the country will turn up their noses. Maybe some people think that this young man from Munich doesn’t fit in here. Even later, when he moves to St.Pauli, this neighborhood club where, unlike Pipinsried, it doesn’t smell of country air but of the squatter scene, his origins are still an issue from time to time.
Hürzeler, however, gets along well both in the Bavarian countryside and in Hamburg’s trendy district. “I am constantly confronted with the cliché that someone comes from a family of doctors and is therefore spoiled,” says Hürzeler.
“My three siblings and I were not raised like spoiled children. We were not only given values such as hard work, passion, discipline and respect. No, they were demonstrated to us. Regardless of the weather, my father got on his bike every morning at half past six, rode to work and came home at eight or nine in the evening.
Hürzeler knows country and city life.Bild: www.imago-images.de
Hürzeler admits that Pipinsried was like a culture shock at first. «I was used to life in big cities. And then you drive 45 minutes across the country after the Munich city limits, you see cows and donkeys and a lot of nature – and at some point this football field appears.” A place where a lot of work awaits him.
At FC Pipinsried, Hürzeler is not only a coach and a hard-working midfielder – 46 warnings in 91 games. No, he also takes care of sponsorship and sports director tasks. And to make ends meet, he also sells art for an agency. He is particularly impressed by Gerhard Richter and his picture “Candle”.
At 25 he says: “My goal is the Champions League.”
Something will soon burn in Pipinsried. Namely Hürzeler’s team. After just one year, the sensational promotion to the regional league was achieved. And national media soon became aware of the young player-coach. And then, at 25, he says this sentence that he probably wouldn’t say exactly the same way today: His goal is to coach a team in the Champions League.
But it was only then that the German Football Association became aware of Hürzeler and hired him as assistant coach of the U20 team. At the same time, he remained boss in Pipinsried until current St.Gallen sports director Roger Stilz received a tip to take a look at this up-and-coming coach, who also has the same nationality as himself.
Stilz, who hails from Eastern Switzerland, is currently the sporting director of St.Pauli’s youth department. He invites Hürzeler to Hamburg to check it out for a week and soon has a wow effect. «My football, my principles, my videos, my units. “I was impressed by this clarity from a coach who is only 27,” says Stilz.
Hürzeler has to smile when asked about the episode and says: “Yes, I was convinced of my ideas and still am. I have this basic security within me. Nevertheless, I constantly reflect on myself. For example, I have training sessions recorded so that I can analyze afterwards how I coached, what I said, and how I appeared. As a coach you have to constantly adapt and rethink things. Because learning has no finish line.”
Precisely because he is very aware of where he still needs to develop and is taking these steps, “he has become one of the most sought-after trainers in Germany,” says Stilz.
The dentist’s son doesn’t get lost in the jungle
But first, Hürzeler will be Timo Schulz’s assistant coach from summer 2020. And that in St.Pauli, this melting pot of party mile and anarchic living space, which contrasts maximally with Pipinsried or Munich. He neither alienates nor loses himself in the jungle of Reeperbahn and “Grosse Freiheit”. “Whenever I go out here, I go to the Schanze, a very cosmopolitan and colorful district. I can also identify very well with these values. In any case, I felt a feeling of home in St.Pauli right from the start.”
FC St.Pauli is a place of longing for football romantics because the club is more humanistic than others. But even in the neighborhood you are measured by numbers and content. Schulz, who later joined FC Basel, felt this when he was fired as coach in December 2022. But a club legend who toiled at the Millerntor for 17 years is not going to be thrown out on the street, certainly not in St.Pauli. So the fans submitted a petition with 12,000 signatures demanding that Schulz’s dismissal be reversed.
Hürzeler feels at home in St.Pauli.Bild: www.imago-images.de
This is not an easy thing for Hürzeler, who has already been promoted to head coach at the age of 29. On the one hand, there is an insecure team that is only a sip of beer away from the relegation zone. On the other hand, there are the fans who mourn his predecessor. «I managed to concentrate on the essentials, working with the team. I can’t influence what the fans think. But with successful work I can influence them to become fans of my team at some point.”
FC St.Pauli not only works, but also celebrates football at its finest
And how it influences that. St.Pauli won all of the first ten games under Hürzeler. A series of successes the likes of which the club has never experienced in the 2nd Bundesliga. And Hürzeler himself is suddenly no longer just recognized in the neighborhood, “where I am one of many,” but the entire country is taking notice of this coaching whiz with a Swiss passport.
What is even more impressive than the phenomenal start is that Hürzeler continues to ride the wave with St.Pauli this season as if that were the norm. The club loses a lot of experience and quality in the summer (Paqarada, Daschner, Medic). But St.Pauli just keeps winning and can celebrate promotion to the 1st Bundesliga with a win against city rivals HSV on Friday.
The streets of St.Pauli at night.Bild: www.imago-images.de
And that with a football that has never been seen here before, that doesn’t seem to fit into this environment that is anything but chic. There is no sign of the shirt-sleeved kick-and-rush anymore. Instead, noble, extravagant combination football. Hürzeler’s successful metamorphosis on St.Pauli seems so daring that the Paris Fashion Show would be transplanted to Pipinsried.
The holiday home in Davos
Hürzeler himself would hardly sign that. The others should create the hype around him. Besides, it’s already big enough so he doesn’t have to help out. Which brings us to the point that we still need to clarify: Hürzeler and Switzerland.
Oh yes, he doesn’t speak Swiss German. He never lived in this country. But I always visited my grandparents in Schaffhausen when they were still alive. And the family also had a holiday home in Davos. «I really enjoyed it there. Skiing in the Parsenn or Jakobshorn area. Or watch a HC Davos game. Yes, I have many fond memories of Switzerland.” But what does he feel like when Germany and Switzerland meet at the European Championships? «May the better team win. That was typically Swiss, wasn’t it?”
(aargauer newspaper)
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