Dirk Schuster (57) has a new job – and for the first time in his coaching career, it takes him abroad. The coach is taking over the Georgian first division club Torpedo Kutaisi.
As the club announced on Monday, Schuster has signed a three-year contract with the first division club from Georgia’s second largest city. His long-standing assistant Sascha Franz will also make the trip to Kutaisi. In a club statement, there is talk of “trust that was established during the first meeting between Schuster and the team management”. According to Schuster, the deciding factor in his appointment was “the scope of the project and the opportunities associated with Torpedo qualifying for international competition.”
The four-time national champions finished the last season in Georgia, which was played according to the calendar year, in second place behind champions FC Iberia and are therefore allowed to take part in the qualification for the Europa Conference League next season. Last season, the club advanced past the second qualifying round after beating FK Tirana of Albania, but was knocked out in the second qualifying round by Omonia Nikosia of Cyprus. Schuster will be training former France international and Liverpool defender Mamadou Sakho, who joined the club in the summer, among others in Kutaisi.
Success especially in Darmstadt
For Schuster, it is his first coaching position outside of Germany. There, the former professional started his career at lower-league clubs before finally making it as a coach of Darmstadt 98 via the Stuttgart stopover. With the Hessians, he achieved the sensational promotion from the 3rd division to the Bundesliga. This was followed by a brief stint at FC Augsburg, before Schuster returned to Darmstadt to coach from 2017 to 2019 and then took charge of Erzgebirge Aue from 2019 to 2021.
His most recent stop in German professional soccer was 1. FC Kaiserslautern, with whom he was promoted to the Bundesliga 2 in 2022 shortly after his appointment. In November 2023, Schuster was dismissed by the Palatinate club. Since then, he has not taken over any other team.
