Gerardo Seoane is history at Borussia Mönchengladbach. The coach’s failure also puts massive pressure on the sporting director.
The dismissal of a soccer coach is often described as “unavoidable” and “logical” when the team’s performance is heading in such a clear direction that the decision itself comes as no surprise. Gerardo Seoane’s departure from Borussia Mönchengladbach falls into this category.
Ten games without a win across two seasons. No goals scored in five consecutive league games. After an alarming slump at the end of last season, now this disastrous start to the new season. Since the sporting bankruptcy declaration in the 0-4 defeat to Bremen, there were no more arguments for keeping Seoane. Borussia’s move: logical. And for quite a few Borussia fans: long overdue.
Virkus failed to provide immediate help
Seoane’s failure puts enormous pressure on Roland Virkus. After all, the sporting director has been under heavy criticism since before the false start to the current season. Seoane also stumbled because Virkus did not provide him with any immediate help during the summer transfer window, even though two very important pillars of the midfield, Tim Kleindienst and Ko Itakura, were lost due to injury and transfer, respectively. In the long run, players such as Giovanni Reyna, Shuto Machino, Jens Castrop, Kevin Diks, and Yannik Engelhardt will likely prove to be the reinforcements the team needs. In the short term, however, they have not yet improved the team, sometimes due to fitness issues and sometimes for other reasons. Neither has Haris Tabakovic, who was brought in as Kleindienst’s replacement but has looked like a foreign body in the team’s system in the first few weeks of the season.
The air is getting thinner again for Virkus. The fact that Borussia has only appeared to be a truly stable entity in phases during his more than three and a half years in office, and that every tentative sign of positive overall development has been quickly overwhelmed by severe setbacks, automatically reflects on the manager.
As a reminder, Virkus’ contract, which was extended in February, contains performance-related exit scenarios, although this has not been officially confirmed. Virkus also needs success—and not a battle to stay in the league. But perhaps the U-23 coach Eugen Polanski, who has been promoted “until further notice,” will turn out to be a stroke of luck and get more out of the squad right away than Seoane has managed to do.
