After discharge
Ex-Bundesliga coach compares himself to a Hollywood couple
June 20, 2026 – 4:10 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
After leaving Frankfurt, Riera settled accounts with the club – including the Brad Pitt comparison. His harshest judgment falls on the players of all people.
About a month after his release Eintracht Frankfurt said the former coach Albert Riera in an interview with the Slovenian TV station Sportklub. The Spaniard was fired in May after just three and a half months in office – and is now making serious allegations against his former club.
The club structure was the problem. Riera said: “The club’s policy is that the coach has no influence on scouting and team composition. This is not the right environment for me and I knew that we could not work together in the long term.” “Names were more important than results” for the club. An allusion to Mario Götze? Riera did not include the German world champion in the squad for individual games, which sparked discussions.
The former Liverpool professional compared his relationship with Eintracht to that of “the gorgeous one Angelina Jolie and the charming Brad Pitt”: “Both are wonderful, but they just don’t fit together. Why? Because it’s not just the looks that matter, but the little details that determine whether something works or not. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I wouldn’t take a single player with me”
The 44-year-old didn’t leave his former players in good stead: “It’s not because Frankfurt has bad players, quite the opposite. But there isn’t a single player in this team that I would take with me for my next project. In Celje there are more players that I would choose for my next club than at Eintracht Frankfurt.”
Regarding his own record, Riera said: “I came when the team was eighth and left when they were also eighth. Of course these are not outstanding results, but average ones. But before I came, the team had only won once in 13 games.” The separation was “on good terms, without any problems”.
Frankfurt’s sports director Markus Krösche However, Riera expressly praised: “I can only say good things about the sports director who brought me in. We worked well together, even our last conversation before the separation was positive. He appreciated my work and my way of thinking and expressed his trust that I would coach big clubs in the future.”