Schuster for Real
July 9, 2007
The coaching roundabout at the Santiago Bernabau stadium in Madrid has officially stopped to let new manager Bernd Schuster on after months of speculation. The former Real Madrid player takes over the recently-crowned Spanish champions after predecessor Fabio Capello was thrown clear of the famously rotation-happy club.
Schuster takes the reins knowing that even if he brings continued success to Real, his position will be just as precarious as if he had gone a whole season without a victory.
Capello, who left Juventus at the beginning of last season to coach Los Blancos, managed to eventually mould a disparate team of fading stars, huge egos and youthful prodigies into a championship-winning outfit. However, delivering Real's 30th La Liga title was not enough for Ramón Calderón, a club president who goes through coaches like Henry VIII went through wives. Capello was sent packing while the celebratory champagne was still cold.
Only five men have managed to serve for one hundred league matches on the touchline with Real. The last was Vicente Del Bosque, who won two league titles and two Champions Leagues but still got the boot in 2003.
Schuster will be hoping that his status as a Madrid hero will at least save his neck from the chopping block for a little longer than his predecessor.
Former Barca star who was crowned a Madrileño
After his move from Bundesliga club FC Köln in 1980, Schuster spent eight years playing with Barcelona, Real's greatest rivals, winning the Primera Liga in 1985 and the European Cup Winners Cup the following year.
His move to Madrid, which usually sees effigies of the traitorous Barca star burnt outside Camp Nou for years to come, was even equally successful with two league titles in 1989 and 1990.
The former Germany international, a European Championship winner in 1980, returned to his homeland in 1993 after three years with Madrid's city rivals Atletico. In his first season back in the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen, Schuster helped the club to a third place finish in 1994. He hung up his boots in 1996.
Stock rises with rebuilding of Getafe
After a number of lower league coaching assignments and jobs which took him to Ukraine and then back to Spain, Schuster eventually settled down with Getafe where he was coach from 2005 until the end of last season. He certainly made an impression, gradually taking the small club from perennial relegation candidates to mid-table stalwarts.
By the time Madrid came calling, Schuster had secured a ninth place in Spain's top division for the second year running. He also took them to last season's Spanish Cup final but suffered defeat to Sevilla.
Schuster takes on a team shorn of some of its most iconic stars. David Beckham and Roberto Carlos have both left, bringing to a close the Galactico era which promised so much and delivered very little. Ronaldo, another Galactico, bailed out mid-season for a new life in Milan. Those who remain have a reputation for being a surly bunch of players, who bicker with each other or complain about the club's hierarchy much of the time.
Volatile players to meet their match
But Schuster's record as a player and the well-publicized but unconfirmed report that he agreed to pay up 480,000 euros ($652,800) to get out of his contract at Getafe to join Real will no doubt afford him a high level of respect with the team and fans alike. A man known for his own fits of pique, Schuster is unlikely to take any funny business from Madrid's pampered international stars.
The new coach, however, will have a compatriot under his charge this season after Christoph Metzelder completed his move from Borussia Dortmund to the Bernabau just days before Schuster's appointment was confirmed.