First Augsburg, then HSV, now Kosovo and Besiktas Istanbul – hardly any other coach is a top candidate as often as Andre Breitenreiter.
If you believe the rumors, then Andre Breitenreiter doesn’t have to worry about his future. The former FC Schalke 04 coach is currently being linked to several clubs.
He was a top candidate at FC Augsburg (in the end, the Dane Jess Thorup was chosen). Hamburger SV is said to have been in contact with the 50-year-old (to replace Tim Walter, but that fell through this Friday). Kosovo is said to have Breitenreiter on the list as national coach at the moment. And on Friday evening, Besiktas Istanbul finally joined the list of interested parties.
Besiktas recently parted ways with coach Riza Calimbay after the 3-1 home defeat to Corendon Alanyaspor. The club is in fifth place in the Süperlig after 16 matchdays (26 points), but is already 17 points behind city rivals Fenerbahce and Galatasaray.
Breitenreiter: memories of time at Schalke
Breitenreiter’s agent Stefan Backs spoke to Sport1 about a possible move to Turkey: “Besiktas is a big club with great fans. It’s an honor to be associated with this club. We’ll see if it turns into an engagement.” Most recently, Breitenreiter had coached TSG Hoffenheim, and was released in February.
Breitenreiter promoted both SC Paderborn (2013-14) and Hannover 96 (2016-17) to the Bundesliga and secured the Swiss championship with FC Zurich in 2021. He worked at Schalke from 2015 to 2016. He did not fulfill his contract, which ran until 2017, because he was released early, even though he had helped S04 reach fifth place in the Bundesliga and the intermediate round of the Europa League.
At the time, he said about his departure from Schalke: “In the second half of the season, it definitely cost me a lot of energy. I consider myself a stable person and I can take a lot, but I took the personal mudslinging against me very much to heart and let it get to me. We had a really good season, so I didn’t understand it and found it extremely unfair. I was suddenly preoccupied with other things and lost my focus on what was important. Schalke was a big learning process for me.”