Coach Marco Rose Gets One Over on Dortmund

Overtime Heroics Editorial

266 days ago

Last Wednesday, after a disastrous 4-1 home defeat to troubled Ukrainian champions Shahktar Donetsk to start their UEFA Champions League season the night before, coupled with a lackluster start to their domestic campaign, RB Leipzig decided to fire their coach Domenico Tedesco. The club soon replaced him with Marco Rose. The latter had been somewhat surprisingly let go by Borussia Dortmund at the end of last season.

In an interesting twist of fate, Rose’s first match in charge of the team was precisely against Dortmund in the Bundesliga this past Saturday. Going into that game, Borussia was in fairly good form, both nationally and in Europe. That was the case, despite their many injuries. Leipzig on the other hand, seemed in complete disarray.

Coach Marco Rose Gets Revenge

Yet, even with only reportedly two days of practice, Marco Rose was able to get a spirited performance out of his team in the match that ended in a quite surprising 3-0 victory for RBL. It is always interesting, how quickly a team’s short-term fortunes can change with a new coach. Particularly, having watched the two previous hapless defeats against Eintracht Frankfurt and Donetsk that led to Domenico Tedesco’s dismissal.

But there is no time to dwell on Saturday’s triumph. Leipzig will take on defending Champions League winners Real Madrid in their second group match of that competition on Wednesday, before facing Borussia Mönchengladbach, (another one of Rose’s former teams) in the next Saturday evening’s round 7 match of the Bundesliga. Those games could decide whether the win against Dortmund was a one off, or the beginning of a true turnaround.

Marco Rose was quick to shrug off reporters’ suggestions that he must have felt a special satisfaction, defeating the club that fired him a few short months ago last Saturday. He did the same when asked how he managed to improve his new team in two days compared to predecessor’s bad first month of the season. He effectively said that hirings and firings of coaches are simply part of the business and that sometimes it may turn out to his benefit, while other times to someone else’s. He also added that he holds no ill will towards Dortmund, that he wishes them well for the future, only hoping that his new Leipzig side might do a little better than his former employer.

The Bundesliga is known as a league of clubs, where coaches have quite a low job security, with one or two exceptions. On Monday afternoon, VfL Bochum fired their coach Thomas Reis as well.

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