Borussia Mönchengladbach's Urgent Search for New Head Coach
Borussia Mönchengladbach are searching for a new head coach with urgency – and with money on the table.
According to Bild, sporting director Rouven Schröder has around four million euros at his disposal to fill the vacant dugout. That figure gives the club room to manoeuvre and means a compensation fee will not scare them off if they decide to prise a coach away from an existing contract.
One name sits prominently on the list: Brian Priske of Sparta Prague. The Danish newspaper Tipsbladet reports that the 49-year-old is high on Gladbach’s shortlist. Details of his contract length in the Czech capital remain unclear, but that uncertainty is unlikely to deter the Foals if they decide he is the man to arrest their slide.
Priske is not the only candidate under serious consideration. Bild also links Alexander Blessin, most recently at St. Pauli, Horst Steffen of SV Werder Bremen, Christian Eichner from Karlsruher SC and Union Berlin coach Steffen Baumgart with the job. Schröder is not working alone on the decision either. His predecessor Roland Virkus, now operating in the Scouting & Recruitment directorate with a focus on “coach scouting”, is also combing through the options.
Baumgart would bring something different. An edge. A personality that fills a technical area and a press conference room in equal measure.
And his CV is already well known on the Rhine.
Before his current spell at Union Berlin and his time at HSV, Baumgart stood on the other side of the rivalry divide. He coached Gladbach’s arch-rivals 1. FC Köln, and he did more than steady the ship there. In his first season, he drove the Billy Goats to a remarkable seventh-place finish, clinching qualification for the Conference League and sparking a surge of optimism in Cologne.
The story did not last forever. After a sporting downturn, Baumgart and Köln parted ways in December 2023, bringing an end to a 98-match stint that had made him one of the most popular figures at the club in recent years.
His Köln past would not disqualify him in Mönchengladbach. Quite the opposite. Inside the club, the profile they are chasing is clear: an experienced coach who has lived through crises, knows how to respond to setbacks and can handle the pressure of a demanding fanbase. Baumgart ticks those boxes. It is also said that he has already studied Gladbach in depth, so he would not arrive needing weeks of video analysis just to get up to speed.
Time is not a luxury the Foals have.
Three matchdays into the Bundesliga season, Gladbach are in deep trouble. They sit 17th in the table, still on zero points, with a grim goal difference of 3:12. Only HSV, goalless and marooned at 0:12, are worse off.
The warning signs flashed brightest last weekend. A 0:5 collapse at SC Freiburg did more than dent the goal difference; it ended Eugen Polanski’s tenure. The performance was described internally as alarming, and the result proved the final straw.
Polanski, 40, had stepped in as interim coach last season after the dismissal of Gerardo Seoane and earned a promotion to the top job, but he never fully convinced the hierarchy. Across 29 matches as head coach, he averaged just 1.10 points per game. The doubts that lingered before this campaign hardened into a decision after the Freiburg debacle.
Now Schröder and Virkus must get the next call right. With four million euros to play with, a relegation battle already brewing, and a fanbase demanding direction, the choice of coach will shape far more than just the next few weeks. It could define where Gladbach belong in the Bundesliga pecking order for years to come.
