“Belief no longer exists”
Hannover 96 fires coach Leitl
Updated 12/29/2024 – 11:21 amReading time: 1 min.
A big bang for Hannover 96: The second division team parted ways with coach Stefan Leitl on Sunday. How sports director Marcus Mann explains the move.
Promotion to the Bundesliga is Hannover 96’s big goal. But the club no longer trusts coach Stefan Leitl to achieve that. That’s why he has to leave six months before the end of his contract. The club announced this on Sunday.
The 47-year-old coached the 96ers for two and a half years. As seventh in the table, Hannover is only two points behind a direct promotion place at the end of the first half of the season, but has only won one game since November.
“Looking at the table, we are definitely up there, but to be honest we haven’t managed any real consistency and we had extreme outliers,” said sports director Marcus Mann. “However, the belief that we could play for promotion until the end in this constellation was no longer unconditional.”
In addition to Leitl, who came to Hanover from SpVgg Greuther Fürth, assistant coach Andre Mijatovic was also released. “It was a great honor for me to be head coach of Hannover 96 for two and a half years. Overall, we were able to take many development steps during this time and put the club on a good path in terms of sport,” said Leitl.