Stefan Effenberg was a big player – but only manager for eight months in Uerdingen, previously trainer for five months in Paderborn. The skeptics got it right.
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In 1994, footballer Stefan Effenberg was banned from the national team because he had shown viewers the middle finger. In 2015, Effenberg was released as a coach at the then second division club SC Paderborn after five unsuccessful months. And this week Effenberg’s first engagement as sports director ended prematurely. At the third division club KFC Uerdingen in Krefeld, the 51-year-old kicked out after eight months – that’s the official reading, maybe he was pushed to it, you don’t know exactly. Effenberg, once a successful football player, struggles with the second and third educational path.
Bad winter training camps obviously played a role in both cases, back then with SC Paderborn and most recently with KFC Uerdingen. In January 2015, alcoholized Paderborn players destroyed furniture at night in the Turkish hotel and striker Nick Proschwitz had bared himself in the hotel bar, after which he had to leave the club. Effenberg was released two months later for lack of success.
There was another problem at the KFC Uerdingen training camp in Tuscany in January: The soccer field near the golf hotel that belongs to the holding of an Effenberg friend turned out to be so unusable and even dangerous for the players that the team only after left for two days. Since then, Effenberg’s influence at the KFC has become manageable. He is said to have had no part in the commitment of the trainer Stefan Krämer, who had previously worked in Krefeld in March. After the outbreak of the corona virus, Effenberg sent short-time work.
The skeptics got it right
When he was introduced as sports director last October, he was sitting with club boss Mikhail Ponomarev in front of a blue and red club banner that read: “Because blue stands for loyalty and red for love.” Even then, skeptical observers wondered how true the emotionally leaping Effenberg and the emotionally explosive Ponomarev might be, but the Russian patron from the town of Meerbusch between Düsseldorf and Krefeld insisted at the time that Effenberg would certainly fulfill the contract by June 2022.
Now the skeptics have been right, although no one has yet reported that they won a lot of money from an English bookmaker by betting on Effenberg’s early departure. It would have been easy money.
In 2004, the native of Hamburg ended a proud football career, the highlights of which were a cup victory with Borussia Mönchengladbach and three championship and one Champions League title with Bayern Munich. In 2012 he acquired the soccer instructor license and was said to have already agreed with Schalke 04 on a coaching contract in 2013 before the Schalke team refused. In October 2015, he surprisingly joined SC Paderborn, where he was released five months later.
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