Ex-professional Stefan Effenberg has criticized Hermann Gerland after his appearance on Sport1’s Doppelpass. The coaching legend had drunk whiskey-cola there.

Hermann Gerland’s appearance on Sport1’s Doppelpass last Sunday got people talking. The cult coach, currently assistant coach of the German A and U21 national teams, had drunk whiskey and cola in the morning talk show and caused a laugh with his witty statements.

Apparently, this did not go down well everywhere. Stefan Effenberg, who was also present in his role as an expert, criticized Gerland for his behavior. “I honestly found his performance questionable. He may have said a few things, but his appearance was still borderline,” Effenberg wrote in his column for T-Online.

Finally, the 68-year-old had a responsibility as co-coach of Germany’s U21s that Effenberg said he didn’t live up to. “Then you can’t sit in a live broadcast while drinking four whiskey-cola at 11 in the morning. Because he has a huge role model function, which he may have forgotten after the third glass at the latest.”

According to Effenberg, even the DFB should have intervened. Other coaches who failed to live up to their role model function in public had been “severely punished” for it.

The 54-year-old former international says: “If you have a role model function and then put on such a performance, then I don’t see anything good there in the future – related to Gerland’s position – at the DFB – on the contrary.”

“I’ve never experienced that before and it shouldn’t be celebrated. I have no understanding for that at all,” Effenberg wrote further. “It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor. But when it comes to playing a decent home European Championship in 14 months, that’s where it starts.”

Gerland, who was born in Bochum, has been part of U21 head coach Antonio Di Salvo’s coaching staff for about a year and a half. He was also part of national coach Hansi Flick’s team at the World Cup in Qatar.

The VfL Bochum legend, who also spent many years as FC Bayern’s co-coach, had explained his fondness for the mixed drink whiskey-cola in a Bild podcast some time ago.

“I never drank alcohol and was often injured in the past. Then my buddies told me that I had to drink a sensible pilsner to stop getting torn fibers,” the Bochum native recounted at the time. “But beer is too bitter for me, and grandpa always drank whiskey-cola. Then I tried it once with a little whiskey and a lot of cola and it tasted good to me. “