Retired Hungarian international Zsolt Lőw has been appointed as the head coach of the German Bundesliga club RB Leipzig. According to Managing Director Marcel Schäfer, this is on a temporary basis for the remainder of the season.
Leipzig currently sits in 6th place on the table with 42 points, three points behind the fourth position, which guarantees UEFA Champions League qualification for next season (depending on how the rest of the European club competitions play out this year, the fifth place may also yield a UCL spot).
That is not a terrible position to be in. However, the overall performance of the club heavily funded by the Austrian energy drink giant Red Bull has certainly been shaky, which led to the termination of Head Coach Marco Rose. In the Champions League league phase, Leipzig only won one game and lost the other seven. Last weekend was the final straw for Rose. It was a prime opportunity to get into the top five by beating their immediate competitor Borussia Mönchengladbach, but they ended up losing the game 1–0 away from home.
RB Leipzig feature two Hungarian internationals on their squad, both getting regular playtime: goalkeeper Péter Gulácsi and centre-back Willi Orbán.
Now, they will be coached by a former Hungarian international, Zsolt Lőw. Lőw has had a tremendous career as an assistant coach, even winning the Champions League in 2021 with Chelsea. He got to work with the top, top talent of football while assisting coach Tomas Tuchel at Paris Saint-Germain, then Chelsea and Bayern Munich. However, this will be his first stint in the head coach position.
Previously, Lőw also served in the assistant coach role at Leipzig, between 2015 and 2018, so he will be returning to familiar territories.
As a footballer, he has collected 25 caps for Hungary, scoring one goal as a left-back. On the club level, he has played Újpest in his home country; as well as Energie Cottbus, Hansa Rostock, Hoffenheim, and Mainz 05 in Germany. Recently, he has been working for the Red Bull group, as a consultant for their football teams. Thus, his move to RB Leipzig was basically an in-house solution for a vacancy.
Lőw first spoke to the Hungarian public media’s sports channel M4 Sport after news broke of his appointment. He said:
‘We wanted to operate differently from the clubs that part ways with their coaches after the first unsuccessful period. We have been helping Marco Rose as well this season, but we saw that, unfortunately, this was not a fruitful cooperation anymore. The results were not coming, so the manager and the club have decided to go their separate ways.
We start with the semi-final in the Cup against Stuttgart on Wednesday. Our goal is to advance, but it will not be easy after only two days of working together. After that, we will have to finish in a Champions League spot in the league. This is a strange situation, to take the place of the coach that we have been trying to save. We would have liked to avoid this, but our conscience is clear.’
Lőw is the sixth Hungarian to coach a team in Bundesliga history; and the first since Pál Dárdai at Hertha BSC in 2023.
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