Bo Svensson is no longer the coach of Bundesliga soccer team FSV Mainz 05. His successor will take over “until further notice”.
Bo Svensson is no longer the coach of the troubled Bundesliga soccer team 1. FSV Mainz 05. The 44-year-old “jointly decided to take this step after a long conversation with sports director Christian Heidel and sports director Martin Schmidt on Thursday (November 2nd, 2023),” the club announced in the evening.
According to the FSV announcement, the position will initially be taken over by the previous U23 coach Jan Siewert. This Saturday (3:30 p.m.) Mainz will host RB Leipzig.
“It is very difficult for me to say goodbye, but I have the feeling that now is the time,” Svensson was quoted as saying in a statement from the club. He must recognize that “no individual is above the club and that all forces must now be pooled together to master the sporting situation.”
Svensson must have found it difficult to separate from FSV
With Svensson, the 05ers had remained without a win in 14 first division games across the seasons. The last success so far came in April against FC Bayern (3:1).
In the current season, Mainz have recorded the weakest interim balance in the club’s history with just three points after nine match days and are bottom of the table. It must have been difficult for Svensson and the club management to part ways because the Dane has been part of the club’s history for years – as a player and coach.
Svensson has been head coach since 2021
He took over the head coaching position at Mainz in January 2021 and impressively managed to stay in the league with them. Heidel, who was reactivated during the crisis and reappointed sports director, had hired him.
Together with the former Mainz coach Schmidt, who was also hired as sports director, the club from the Rhine was looking up again for a long time. In the first season with Svensson, the Mainz team came in twelfth, and last season they were eighth in the table and were on course for the European Cup for a long time.
“…is not appropriate for me”
In the current winless streak in the Bundesliga and the recent cup knockout at Hertha BSC (0:3), Svensson clearly no longer felt able to initiate a turnaround. At the beginning of the week he had ruled out resigning: “I don’t think it’s appropriate to think about it now.”
Between 2007 and 2014, the Dane played 109 games for Mainz 05 as a central defender. At the general meeting, Heidel spoke of a “really intact team” in terms of character, in which “a good spirit” also prevails.
Mood change after elimination in the DFB Cup
And: Mainz has “the talent for such challenges and also the tools” to overcome them. After the cup defeat in Berlin, his sports director Schmidt took a different tone. The team wants to get out of the worst crisis in years with Svensson, but it is “stagnating at all ends”.
