Matthias Jaissle at RB Salzburg: The next one from the coach forge – Sport
At the moment of his greatest success to date, Matthias Jaissle disappeared. Red Bull Salzburg defeated FC Sevilla 1-0 in the last group game and made it into the last 16 of the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. That was a moment that the entire club and also the beverage company in the background had been working toward since its entry in 2005. The players and staff in the empty Walser Stadium hugged each other in euphoria.
The head coach Jaissle, easily recognizable by his elegant beige winter coat, also joins in for a short time. But then he withdrew for a few minutes. Because despite all the joy for the club and its young players, who had achieved “historical things”, as Jaissle says today: This leap into the knockout phase was also the success of a coach who was only 33 years old and whose football career had been more had lows as highs. Then you can pause for a moment.
Shortly before the end of the winter break, Jaissle talks in a video call about a burden that fell from him at the moment of this Seville victory: “In the Champions League I put the pressure on myself,” he says. He quickly understood how things are going at RB Salzburg: The series championship in Austria’s consistently weak league has long since become so normal that even a draw in Salzburg is considered a sensation. What counts is the Champions League, which is why everyone in the club was “really tense” in the qualifying games at the beginning of the season, so Jaissle – especially since hardly any club knows better how it feels to fail admission to the premier class.
Two 2-1 wins in the play-off against Denmark’s Brondby IF is enough this time to pave the way for Salzburg. They were embedded in the best starting record that a new RB coach ever managed: Salzburg won 18 (plus three draws) of the first 21 games under Jaissle. It was clear that the 33-year-old would be moved directly with his predecessors Jesse Marsch and Marco Rose. It was hardly to be expected that he would eclipse them – with the youngest squad in the club’s history.
Jaissle inherited the offensive mentality from Marsch, but not the defensive naivety
When Jaissle took over the post from March, who had moved to Leipzig (and quickly failed there) in the previous summer, some saw a problematic season ahead for Salzburg. Jaissle, who was born in Nürtingen, had previously coached Salzburg’s team, FC Liefering, for just six months, before that he was coach of the U18s for a year and a half. Like Marco Rose, he went through the classic RB coaching school, and nobody denied Jaissle’s talent. But the Salzburg squad, which has been a supplier of talent for Europe’s top leagues for years, has not been fleeced as much as it was in the summer of 2021: striker Patson Daka (Leicester), midfield boss Enock Mwepu (Brighton) and long-time defense chief Andre Ramalho (Eindhoven). ) was no longer available to the new coach. In addition, Mwepu’s remaining deputy Sekou Koita received a cruciate ligament rupture.
The fact that Salzburg nevertheless remained on the road to success was certainly due to Karim Adeyemi, Noah Okafor and other highly talented players in the team, who consistently played at a high level. The young German national player Adeyemi, 21, has long been traded as a summer addition to Dortmund, and leads Austria’s top scorer list with 14 goals. But Jaissle also made a significant contribution to the success. He inherited the offensive mentality from Marsch, but not the defensive naivety. “I give all phases of the game the same weight,” he says, “despite all the offensive thinking: we need this balance in our game.” The word balance brought Jaissle straight to comparison with a predecessor, albeit not one from the modern RB school that began in 2012 with the arrival of Ralf Rangnick. The comparison is instead: Salzburg have conceded as few goals this season as recently under a certain Huub Stevens (coach 2009-2011).
When Jaissle talks about “his” football, he sounds like most coaches of his generation, he talks about it residual defensefrom one handwritingthat he wants to bring in – and how he involves the players in training. For counter-pressing, for example, you need short distances to the ball. “But it was also important to me that they not only implement it, but also understand it, because then they prefer to do it,” emphasizes Jaissle. Jaissle knows this approach from the coach who shaped him, the former central defender, the most: Even with Rangnick, says Jaissle, it was never about simply implementing moves: “With Ralf, a lot of things made sense, so everyone always did pulled along.” He himself often asked why: “I’m sure I pissed off my coach from time to time.”
The end of his career at the age of 26 was a “shock”, but it was also his entry into the future
Under Rangnick, Jaissle was one of the talented team at TSG Hoffenheim that became furiously autumn champions after being promoted to the Bundesliga. As a defender, he once played a big game against FC Bayern during this high, and Jaissle can only hope that this time – with Salzburg in the premier class round of 16 against colleague Julian Nagelsmann – it will be less unlucky than it was in December 2008. Hoffenheim conceded, with Jaissle in defense, in the top game in Munich shortly before the end of the game 1:2, it was the beginning of a crash. The crash was particularly hard for Jaissle personally: Shortly thereafter, he tore a cruciate ligament, followed later by a torn meniscus and an Achilles tendon injury, which caused him to end his career prematurely in 2014 – when he was only 26.
It was a “huge shock,” he says, but he knew he wanted to keep playing football. “In Leipzig I had the opportunity to get a taste of all areas through a trainee program,” says Jaissle – but he got stuck at the first station, the U16.
He now lets his career experiences flow into his work as a coach, especially when dealing with the players: “When you’ve experienced these highs and then follow such low points where you are completely on your own and have to fight your way out, then that’s it a helpful experience,” he says. That’s why Jaissle sometimes brings injured players like Koita to training so they don’t feel left alone – because he knows what it’s like.
Jaissle defines his coaching role a little differently than his colleagues, he doesn’t just see himself as a squad leader: “As a coach, you should support players comprehensively, even beyond the current employment relationship, that’s how I interpret the profession.” He is also concerned with the next steps of his jewels Adeyemi and Okafor look: “Of course there are offers, everyone has worked for that. But the boys should also appreciate that things are going well – and that it is not a matter of course to work here under these conditions.”
If Jaissle continues like this himself, it won’t be long before other clubs contact him – none of his Salzburg predecessors was in office for more than two years. Jaissle sees it calmly, he knows the toughness of the business from his playing days: “Back then, the consultants set me ambitious goals very early on,” he says in retrospect, “everything was possible” for him. Jaissle ended up neither in the Premier League nor in the national team, but for a short time even with the retired in Hoffenheim’s notorious “Training Group 2”.
He learned the lessons from this: “I realized back then that it made no sense to forge a career plan. Because a career in this business cannot be planned in this way. Neither as a player nor as a coach.” But now it’s time against Bayern.