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FSV Mainz 05 – where football careers begin!
As players, coaches and managers. Jürgen Klopp of all people knew that best. “Everything I am, I am because of you,” he said in tears when leaving Mainz in 2008. Yet the club and its leading figures have not always embodied the same solidity as long-term president Harald Strutz.
A transfer artist with glittering presidents: Jürgen Jughard...
A transfer artist with glittering presidents: Jürgen Jughard, elected in 1980 and armed with every power imaginable, almost drove the club into bankruptcy before his mysterious death in 1982.
A transfer artist with glittering presidents: Jürgen Jughard, elected in 1980 and armed with every power imaginable, almost drove the club into bankruptcy before his mysterious death in 1982. Jughard loved staging himself. Even in Oberliga days he invited all the league’s club presidents to carnival sessions at his own expense. When Mainz won the German amateur championship in June 1982, the celebration in the city park restaurant went well beyond the local holy trinity of sausage, roll and wine.
Yet by August 1982 it was all over. Jughard lost his job at Deutsche Anlagen-Leasing, and three days later died in a road accident near Koblenz. Without their patron, Mainz suddenly stood on the brink.
Later investigations showed that Jughard had showered the club and its players with gifts and cash in the millions, financed through embezzlement at his employer. Creditors and the tax authorities came knocking, and at times Mainz could scarcely pay the wages of their Oberliga players.
The end in 2014: In May 2014 Thomas
The end in 2014: In May 2014 Thomas Tuchel no longer wanted to fulfill the final year of his contract and instead demanded a sabbatical — just as Pep Guardiola had done.
Tuchel no longer wanted to fulfill the final year of his contract and instead demanded a sabbatical — just as Pep Guardiola had done. He still wanted to keep living in Mainz, “voluntarily,” as he later said, when he returned with Borussia Dortmund in 2015. Tuchel’s departure left a lot of wounded pride in Mainz, especially with then-president Harald Strutz, who said there was no reason not to greet one another, only that they clearly had different ideas of respect. Tuchel declined to comment at first, then said Strutz’s manner of saying such things reflected more on Strutz than on him.
The Tuchel exit: Oh my God. Klopp, people in Mainz felt, would have managed it without leaving anyone angry.
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M05 · FY 2023-24OMG — Update 2020–2026
Bo Svensson left Mainz 05 in the summer of 2023 despite having a contract and enormous popularity.
Bo Svensson left Mainz 05 in the summer
Bo Svensson left Mainz 05 in the summer of 2023 despite having a contract and enormous popularity.
of 2023 despite having a contract and enormous popularity. He moved to 1. FC Union Berlin, where he took over a side that had failed in the Champions League and slid into the relegation fight. The experiment did not even last a full season.
In spring 2024, Svensson was dismissed in Berlin. From Mainz’s “coaching university” to the Champions League to unemployment — in just ten months.