After 10 years they are back. And Trier’s basketball players come to stay. You want more than a relegation battle. Even if the budget is one of the smallest in the league.
The expectations
The main thing is that after ten years of second division, fans and clubs were simply happy to get back to the top after the decisive promotion game. From 1990 to 2015, the Trier basketball players were a fixture in the first Bundesliga (BBL), were twice German cup winners (1998 and 2001). They want back there.
We are a small club that wants to establish itself at the top.
Florian Hosseini Görge, merchant director of Gladiators Trier
However, the climb should become more than a short intermezzo. With 4.5 million euros, the Gladiators got the highest budget in the Trier basketball story, but are the bottom in the league comparison. “For us this is a quantum leap. We are proud that we did it.”
The team
What Franz Wagner and Co. awarded the European national team’s European Championship victory is also a trademark of the Gladiators. “The team chemistry is right, you can tell in the field and outside the hall,” says coach Jacques Schneider. Everyone has their role and gives everything for the team. Trier starts the Bundesliga with a well -coordinated team. Eight players from the promotion squad are also there in the first division.
For this moment he came back to Trier: club legend Maik Zirbes after climbing with the master shell of the second division.
The team’s supports have also remained. Just like the Iranian international Behnam Yackchali. When it gets tight, he takes responsibility in the field. Or the 78-time German international Maik Zirbes. After stations at home and abroad, such as Bayern Munich or Red Stern Belgrade, the 34-year-old returned two years ago to lead his club back to the first division.
The king’s transfer
If you address coach Jacques Schneider on the “royal transfer”, he actually doesn’t want to highlight any of his new players. “They are all important and give us new quality,” says Schneider. But when it comes to the role of the American Eli Brooks, you can feel his pride that the 26-year-old chose Trier.
Last season with league competitor Oldenburg for a long time, Brooks now wants to start again in the Bundesliga. During his college time at the University of Michigan, he got the nickname “The Professor”. Membership players and coaches appreciated the “basketball IQ” of the construction player, who is supposed to steer the game of the Gladiators.
My buddy Franz Wagner encouraged me to switch to Trier.
Eli Brooks, new addition of the Gladiators Trier
In college, Brooks also played with the German NBA star Franz Wagner in a team. Both are good friends. Wagner was still a guest at the Brooks wedding before the European Championship.
Eli Brooks and Franz Wagner were two of the key players with the Michigan Wolverines and remained good friends even after the college.
“Franz encouraged me to go to Trier. He knows a few boys from the team from his Berlin time and only heard good things about Trier,” says Brooks.
The trainer
At 33, Jacques Schneider is the youngest coach of the BBL. The coming season in the upper house of the German basketball is only his second season as head coach of a professional team. Schneider has a clear idea of what a team should look like as a trainer: “For us, team basketball, cohesion, respect among themselves and towards the opponent.”
A conspiratorial community. Trainer Jacques Schneider relies on respect and cohesion.
Schneider is considered one of the largest German trainer talents in the scene. “The way he works will be an important factor for Trier in the first division,” says his coaching colleague Christian Held from competitor Rasta Vechta. Held was a coach in Trier in the second division. “This is no coincidence that he is now in the Bundesliga with Trier,” says Christian Held.
Prize on Wed., September 24, 2025 10:00 a.m., SWR4 in the morning, SWR4
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