🎠 Rose, Hütter, Flick and the spinning Bundesliga merry-go-round | OneFootball

It all started in December 2020. Sort of. A fourth defeat in just 11 league games saw Borussia Dortmund drop to fifth in the Bundesliga table and cost Lucien Favre his job.

A week later, Borussia Mönchengladbach sporting director Max Eberl, who has reportedly attracted interest from Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund in recent years, signed a new Gladbach deal until 2026.

It took less than two months for his next big task to become clear, as it was confirmed that head coach Marco Rose, who led Gladbach to fourth last season, would take over BVB at the end of the current campaign.

And Eberl has now responded, with Rose’s replacement named on Tuesday. Adi Hütter has done a superb job with Eintracht Frankfurt and is on course to lead the club to the Champions League for the first time in its modern form, but has accepted Gladbach’s offer to instead take them into 2021/22.

From the outside, it’s an interesting choice. Frankfurt haven’t featured on European club football’s greatest stage since losing the 1960 European Cup final and Hütter, having led them to the precipice of the Champions League, now won’t be around for the ride.

He’s leaving for a club who haven’t won the DFB Pokal since 1995 (Frankfurt won it in 2018), have won just one European knockout tie since 1996 (Frankfurt made the Europa League semi-finals under Hütter in 2019) and sit 13 points behind his current team in the league.

It just goes to show the value of stability.

Frankfurt may have plenty of it on the pitch but they are surrounded by uncertainty off of it. Long-time sporting director Bruno Hübner is set to leave the club at the end of the season and sporting executive Fredi Bobic is reportedly eager to follow.

The club may be heading into the Champions League, but they’re also heading into an era of uncertainty. That would be just as true with Hütter in charge of the team. And the Austrian has understandably chosen the highly-rated and remarkably reliable Eberl instead.

Early reports from Sky Sport suggest Frankfurt could turn to Ralf Rangnick to replace Bobic and Hütter at once, and that would at least do away with concerns that a new sporting director and head coach would need time to gel and may not see eye to eye.

That precise problem is the reason this year’s head coach madness around the Bundesliga isn’t done yet, with Bayern boss Hansi Flick reportedly sharing a strained relationship with Hasan Salihamidžić and refusing to rule out an interest in the Germany job.

With the national team position free from the summer, Flick’s departure is a real possibility, and Bayern may have to part ways with Salihamidžić to convince the head coach to stay.

If Flick does leave, RB Leipzig boss Julian Nagelsmann will most likely be the hot favourite to take his place at the Allianz Arena, a move that would leave a vacancy at a club who are set for a fourth top three finish in the last five years.

They wouldn’t be short on takers.

It really is all change at the top, and it feels like the Bundesliga merry-go-round is just starting to spin.