Christian Wück is the new women’s national coach. He has already proven his abilities – even if some fans view him critically.
“He is a coach who can develop players and make them better individually, is always very communicative, conveys a winning mentality and knows how to create a team from individual personalities in order to be successful together.” DFB sports director Nia Künzer has already described it in the association’s statement about the new national women’s coach: Christian Wück knows what he is doing. It has been clear since this Friday that the 50-year-old will take over from interim coach Horst Hrubesch after the Olympic Games.
The decision to choose Wück comes as a surprise – and yet speaks for his previous work. The Franconian celebrated the greatest success of his coaching career with the German U17 national team last December: 6:5 after penalties in the final against France – Wück made Germany world champions at the tournament in Indonesia. For the first time in 38 years.
“I’m at a loss for words, it’s just an incredible feeling of happiness. If anyone got to know the character of this team, it was today in this game,” Wück praised the fighting spirit of his young team on RTL after the final. “Fighting against such resistance, even being behind in the penalty shootout, is simply unbelievable. Everything is perfect, we’re really happy.”
And then announced his departure: “I told the boys that they would make themselves immortal. I am so grateful to be able to look after this year, today was our last game together.” At the forefront of success is the coach who has a lot of experience in German youth football. Wück has been working for the DFB junior teams since 2012. He began his coaching career at his former club Arminia Bielefeld after retiring in 2002, before moving to Ahlen and Kiel.
However, his coaching job at the DFB was not his first contact with the association. Even as an active player, he was in the service of German football: As an 18-year-old, Wück was considered one of the country’s greatest talents. He was called up to the national team for the first time in 1992 as a player for 1. FC Nürnberg. The young offensive man attracted attention early on – but not only in a positive way.
“Wuck, you pig!”
The trigger for this was a scene in the important duel between Nuremberg and Borussia Dortmund in April 1992. BVB was the league leader at the time and wanted to become champions again for the first time in 29 years. On the 31st matchday we went to Franconia. In the eleventh minute of the game, Wück was in a running duel with Dortmund’s Günter Kutowski. The BVB defender tried to tackle, Wück sensed something and fell to the ground in the penalty area.
“I didn’t have to fall, but there was definitely contact – but outside the penalty area and not in such a way that I couldn’t keep running. You didn’t have to whistle that,” Wück recalled in an interview with “Goal” in February 2023. and “Spox.” This was also proven by the slow motion. But even though Wück’s action was a mistake, referee Hans-Jürgen Kasper pointed to the point. The “Club” took the lead and Wück, of all people, made it 2-0 a short time later in his Bundesliga starting eleven debut.
Dortmund’s top scorer Stéphane Chapuisat reduced the gap, but BVB slipped to third place as a result of the defeat – and in the end did not win the long-awaited title. From then on, many Dortmund fans hated Wück. He received death threats in the mail for his action, had to accept rude insults like “Wück, you pig” from many BVB supporters – and discovered that even today, 31 years after the game, hardly any Dortmund player has forgotten the scene.