Crisis in Braunschweig
Kessel statement: BTSV puts trust in coach Backhaus
11/11/2025 – 3:24 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
The crisis at Eintracht Braunschweig is coming to a head. Now a coaching discussion is also flaring up. Sports director Benjamin Kessel sides with his head coach.
Arrived in the bottom of the table: After the seventh defeat in the last eight league games and the fall to relegation place 16 in the 2nd Bundesliga, Heiner Backhaus’s personality almost inevitably came into focus at Eintracht Braunschweig. After the home defeat against VfL Bochum (0:2), sports director Benjamin Kessel announced an analysis in which the coaching position should also be discussed.
And that obviously worked out in favor of the head coach. “I still have great confidence in the quality of the team and the belief in our coaching team,” said Kessel in an interview published on Eintracht’s website on Tuesday. “We all have a shared responsibility to deliver results and turn the mood around Eintracht around again. The coaching team around Heiner, the team on the pitch and us in the sporting leadership.”
In the past few days we have discussed the current sporting situation with the players involved. Because one thing is clear: things shouldn’t continue like they were before. “We don’t need to talk around it,” said Kessel. “It’s clear that we had to honestly discuss internally – together with the coaching team – how we could get out of this situation. That’s what we did.”
In addition to the many red cards, an explainable reason for the poor results in recent weeks is the misery of injuries and the resulting personnel shortages. Especially in defense, important players like Mehmet Aydin, Lukas Frenkert and Frederik Jäkel were regularly missing. But Kessel doesn’t want to use that as an excuse. Because: On the other hand, there were also issues “that we have repeatedly been unable to resolve over the past few weeks,” he explained.
These were addressed bluntly. “We have defined some topics that we clearly need to improve. We expect the team and everyone involved to tackle this decisively,” continued Kessel. “We should focus solely on our performance. We need points quickly – regardless of the opponent.”
During the international break, the “Lions” now have some time to collect themselves and prepare for the run-up to Christmas. There will then be an away game at Hertha BSC on November 21st.