The sky is the limit for Stuttgart following the arrival of Sebastian Hoeneß
The Swabians have gone from hopeless relegation fodder to a team capable of beating anyone in the Bundesliga in no time at all. And it's all down to their impressive new head coach.
New Stuttgart head coach Sebastian Hoeneß would have been forgiven for greeting Friday’s pre-match media questions with an almighty roll of the eyes, ahead of his team’s Bundesliga clash with Borussia Dortmund. Rather than concern themselves with the precarious predicament the Swabian club currently finds itself in, most of the questions were focused on the manager’s second name and a match that was taking place 240 kilometres east of where Hoeneß was sitting.
The Stuttgart tactician is not only the nephew of former Bayern Munich general manager, president and all-round Godfather, Uli Hoeneß, but also spent much of his coaching education at the Bavarian club, where he trained as a youth coach and later as the second team head coach before moving to Hoffenheim in 2020. Whether he likes it or not, Sebastian has Bayern flowing through his veins. And the media couldn’t help but wonder whether he felt an extra hint of determination to take points off Dortmund in order to do his old club a favour.
The 40-year-old coach was quick to dismiss stories about his uncle contacting him prior to the Dortmund game and any suggestions that he had any ulterior motives for taking points off Saturday’s opponents. But behind closed doors Hoeneß may have been secretly delighted with how the media attention had fallen on his last name rather than the work he and his newly-acquired club were doing on the training ground and pitch. For while nobody was really looking, Hoeneß has quickly turned things around at the Mercedes-Benz Arena and may yet save Stuttgart from relegation in fantastic fashion.
How Hoeneß turned things around at Stuttgart
To say Stuttgart were outstanding against Dortmund would be something of an understatement. Aside from two clumsy yellow cards from Konstantinos Mavropanos, the home side matched their Westfalen visitors in every aspect of the game and were undoubtedly worthy of the three goals they bagged on the day.
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