Duel against the former club
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Ole Werner got RB Leipzig back into the correct operating mode after the system failure in the previous season. With his outwardly North German style, he gave the two-time cup winners their very own DNA again – with changes of pace, depth and guys who are considered so-called diamonds in the rough.
Now he will face his former club Werder Bremen for the first time this Sunday (3:30 p.m./DAZN), where he had to leave early in May of this year. He had previously informed Werder that he would be leaving the club in the summer of 2026 after failed contract negotiations. The Green-Whites quickly decided on a direct separation.
A decision from which everyone benefited in the end. Werner has made Leipzig a top team again, in Bremen they are very happy with their successor Horst Steffen and eighth place after ten games. That’s why there’s no bad blood before the reunion.
“For me, the topic of Werder is a great chapter and perhaps one of the best times I’ve had in football so far,” said Werner in the “Bild” podcast “Phrasenmäher”. “But it’s over and I’m completely at peace with myself and us.”
Similar sounds can be heard from Bremen. “Ole is a very good trainer, that’s exactly what we appreciated about him,” said head of licensing Peter Niemeyer to the “Deichstube”. “I was convinced that he would also do a good job at this new station and bring his convictions to the team.”
Klopp’s call changed everything for Leipzig coach Werner
Werner himself doesn’t want to make the issue too big before his first meeting with his ex-employer. Aside from his appearance on the podcast, he declined all interview requests. For him, the game and the RB success should be the focus.
He didn’t have to mourn the separation from Bremen for long. On the day he was released, Jürgen Klopp, Head of Global Soccer at Red Bull, rang. He hardly had to do any convincing. Werner, who was currently on a cruise, was on the phone in constant mode with those responsible for RB. “I think a lot of the assessments we made and the conversations we had with him worked out a lot,” praised Leipzig’s sports director Marcel Schäfer.
Upheaval, rebuilding, development – that’s exactly his thing. The 37-year-old Werner didn’t let the 6-0 loss at FC Bayern at the start of the season bother him. Shortly afterwards, top performers like Xavi Simons and Loïs Openda also left. Werner, who is by no means first choice at RB, relies on strong characters like Christoph Baumgartner. And let the young wild ones like new national player Assan Ouédraogo go.
Werner is “emotional when the doors are closed”
One could say, however, that his enormous calm, somewhat typically North German coldness, is a fallacy. “I, too, am emotional when the doors are closed,” he emphasized recently. This became public in an RB video when he gave an emotional speech in English with the words: “Listen boys, this is our stadium, our pitch, our night”. He knows how to grab his players. Werner constantly talks about development steps. “It’s about working in such a way that everyone feels like they’re getting better,” said the head coach, who originally planned to become a vocational school teacher for German and economics and accounting. In the Bild podcast he said about his year-long gardening job in Australia: “If I didn’t have the greatest job in the world, it would be the second greatest.”
Not everyone expected that things would go so well for Werner and Leipzig right from the start. But the coach remains humble. Even the club’s internal starting record of 22 points is “irrelevant” for him. After the debacle in Munich, seven wins and one draw followed. Werner had already started better as RB coach (2.44 points) than Julian Nagelsmann (1.94) or Ralf Rangnick (1.93). He dodged questions as a possible Bayern hunter with a tired smile. “There will also be a shot across the bow,” he said. That’s part of a development phase, like the last 1:3 loss at TSG Hoffenheim.