Otto Rehhagel
Otto Rehhagel (born August 9 1938 in Essen) is a German football coach and former football player. With Ottmar Hitzfeld, Udo Lattek and Franz Beckenbauer, he is one of the most successful German trainers ever.
In Greece, he is occasionally called King Otto (βασιλιάς Όθων), probably in allusion to King Otto of Greece, however he already had this nickname during his coaching career in Germany. As a wordplay referring to Herakles, son of Zeus, he has been nicknamed "Rehakles" as well. Rehhagel himself likes to call himself Kind der Bundesliga ("Child of the Bundesliga").
He is married to Beate Rehhagel. Beate is also remarkable in her own light, because she acts as a sort of player scout for her husband. They have one child, Jens Rehhagel.
Player career
Rehhagel played for the local club Rot-Weiss Essen (1960-63), after the start of the Bundesliga for Hertha BSC Berlin (1963-65), and until 1972 for Kaiserslautern. He played 201 games in the Bundesliga.
Trainer career
Early years
He started to become a coach in 1974 with Kickers Offenbach, but failed to make immediate impact. Most famously, with Borussia Dortmund, he suffered a historical 0:12 loss after which the yellow press called him Otto Torhagel ("Tor" means goal in German, and "Hagel" means a hailstorm).
Werder Bremen
After several short assignments he worked for Werder Bremen from 1980 till 1995. During this spell, Werder Bremen established themselves as one of the main teams in the Bundesliga. He led them to two German championships, in 1988 and 1993 and two German Cup victories, as well as one win in the Cup Winners' Cup.
Bayern Munich
He coached Bayern Munich for little less than a year in the 95-96 season. He was famously ousted three weeks before they were to play in the final of the 1996 UEFA Cup, after a disappointing end ot their league campaign. His position was taken by Franz Beckenbauer who led the team to victory in the cup.
1. FC Kaiserslautern
After this, he coached Kaiserslautern 1996-2000, who had previously degraded after a catastrophic season. He injected new energy into the team, so that FCK comfortably got promoted again. Prior to the season, FCK was seen as a dark horse for an place in the UEFA cup, but Rehhagel's team simply steamrollered the opposition. With sparkling offense and sheer never-ending energy (a half-dozen games were won in injury time), Kaiserslautern won a sensational German championship in 1998. Rehhagel coached FCK to some less spectacular, but very decent results, but heavy internal conflicts and a massive smear campaign against his person caused him to leave.
Greek national squad
In 2001 he became coach of the Greek national team. The team qualified directly for Template:Ec2, ahead of Spain and Ukraine. Ranked 100-1 outsiders, they sensationally defeated Portugal, France and the Czech Republic, favourites to many on the way to the finals where they defeated Portugal again to lift the cup. Rehhagel, who was seen as the man most responsible for the team's success, became the first foreign coach ever to win a European Championship.
Rehhagel adopted a defensive approach in playing his Greek side, using energetic midfielders to weary the opponents and the policy of defending in numbers to numb opposition attacks. When charged with boring play, he said, "No one should forget that a coach adapts the tactics to the characteristics of the available players." Interestingly, his time at Werder Bremen is remembered for the flashy and spectacularly attacking football the team favoured.
After Rudi Völler resigned as Germany coach in the wake of that country's first-round exit in Euro 2004, Rehhagel was considered by many to be a strong candidate for his homeland's job. He had the support of the public, despite being considered a maverick by the footballing establishment. After three other candidates removed themselves from consideration, Rehhagel received an offer to take over as Germany coach, which he officially turned down on July 10.
In their qualifying group for the
. They failed to make the grade, finishing 4th in a tough group which saw Ukraine advance automatically and Turkey make the play-off.
Accolades
- European Champion with the Greek soccer team (2004)
- Cup Winners' European Cup (1993)
- 3x German champion (1988, 1993, 1998)
- 3x German Cup (1980, 1991, 1994)
- Bundesverdienstkreuz of the German Federal Republic (2005)
- "Greek of the Year" (2004), first-ever foreigner to win this award
- Laureus World Sports Awards with the Greek soccer team (2005)
Coaching style
Rehhagel has popularized the phrase kontrollierte Offensive (controlled offense). He prefers a grass-roots approach to soccer, stressing the importance of at least two (often also three) big, strong headers in the central defense. His defensive schemes often use a dominant libero, such as Michael Kutzop, Miroslav Kadlec, Rune Bratseth or Traianos Dellas. In defense Rehhagel usually prefers robustness and height over footballing abilities (the most notorious example being Ulrich Borowka). In the period of allround, fluid defense, many have criticized this as dated and anachronistic, but Rehhagel loves to reply that his success makes him right.
Rehhagel's offensive schemes usually are built around the talents of his players. Rehhagel has earned himself a reputation for building midfields where on one hand each player feels being on his natural position, but on the other hand standing so compact that opponents it difficult to find openings. In addition, Rehhagel's teams also regularly develop a lot of pressure over the wings. His teams regularly employ at least one dominant header as central striker (Karlheinz Riedle, Rudi Völler, Frank Neubarth, Olaf Marschall, Angelos Charisteas). The wing play and the header-strong striker obviously complement each other.
The backbone of his teams are usually older, more experienced players, talents rarely find themselves taking responsibility. Under him, even the young Michael Ballack constantly warmed the bench. However, Rehhagel is also known for being an excellent talent scout, having discovered Völler, Riedle, Marco Bode, Dieter Eilts, Marco Reich and many others.
Rehhagel is also known for being a good motivator. His teams regularly have a lot of team spirit, most famously the Greek national squad, who he turned from a dead-end squad nobody wanted to play for into a must-be-there-at-all-costs team. He is also famous for re-ignating the careers of older, seemingly dead-end players, such as Manfred Burgsmüller, Mirko Votava, Olaf Marschall or Theodoris Zagorakis.
Rehhagel is also a deft and ruthless club politician. He is notorious for restructuring a club so that he wields absolute power, making friends with powerful people and using them to eliminate opposition. He prefers the system of benign dictatorship. His way of handling a club - in a competent and innovative, but also highly patronizing and condescending way - has been immortalized as ottocracy, a pun on his name and the words democracy and autocracy.
Finally, Rehhagel is considered somewhat of a maverick in Germany. In decades of interviews, he has established himself a reputation for being elitist, eccentric and unwilling to admit mistakes, similar to e.g. José Mourinho. He denounces critics, even if they are objectively correct (e.g. he after losing to Bayer Leverkusen in 1998 because their trainer Christoph Daum surprised him by playing 4:3:3, he asserted to the end that Daum had played 4:5:1). However, seeing his impressive record, he is apparently able to back up his words.
Notes
- Rehhagel is the only person who - as player and as trainer - has participated in over 1000 Bundesliga-matches. This also explains his nickname Kind der Bundesliga (child of the Bundesliga).
- In the Bundesliga, he holds the records of most victories (387), most draws (205), most losses (228), and his teams have scored most goals (1473) and and allowed more (1142) than any others.
- He coached the hapless Borussia Dortmund squad who suffered the highest defeat in the Bundesliga with 0:12 (against Borussia Mönchengladbach, 1978),
- His Werder Bremen team of 1988 was the squad with the least allowed goals ever in der Bundesliga (22).
- His stint with Werder Bremen is the second longest consecutive occupation as a trainer ever in the Bundesliga. It was only recently surpassed by Volker Finke of SC Freiburg.
- In the mid-eighties, Rehhagel often just fell short of success and had a string of second places and Cup Final losses. In that time, his nickname was Otto II or Vizeadmiral ("Vice Admiral"). However, after enjoying tremendous successes, use of this handle has obviously ceased.
- As a player, Rehhagel was known as a tough-as-nails defender.
- Although being more than 60 years old, Rehhagel still has very little grey hair, and this seems to be natural. Once, the yellow press had a barber examine Rehhagel's hair (SPORT-BILD, 1998), and he confirmed that fact.