“Act now before it’s too late”
Quake at traditional club: captains demand coach quit
Updated 11/10/2025 – 5:08 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
In the early summer of 2024, SSV Ulm celebrated its march through to the 2nd Bundesliga. A year and a half later, the situation on the Danube is completely different.
SSV Ulm is in crisis. The second division relegated team is threatened with falling into the regional league. After 14 match days in the current season, the “Spatzen” are in 18th place in the 3rd league, only the newcomers from Schweinfurt and Havelse are in an even worse position. Before the start of the season, Ulm was not counted among the likely relegated teams.
The Danube club has already changed coaches once. If the team has its way, this will be the case again during the upcoming international break. The “Südwest Presse” has a letter written by captains Johannes Reichert and Christian Ortag to the supervisory board.
The letter describes the relationship between the team, the coach and the sports management around sports director Markus Thiele in clear terms: “The atmosphere is poisoned, the trust is destroyed.” The players complain that they are left “completely defenseless” and receive “no backing, no support, no trust.” Several professionals are “at the end of their tether – mentally, emotionally and humanly.” According to SWR, this letter was not agreed upon with the rest of the team.
Ortag and Reichert contradicted trainer Moritz Glasbrenner’s account. After the 5-0 home defeat against Hansa Rostock, he said: “We are far too friendly as a group. As an opponent, it feels unusually easy to play against us.” The team should not “constantly have their lollipops taken out of their hands in the playground.”
Sports director Markus Thiele apparently sees it similarly, but is also criticized by the two captains. Reichert and Ortag demanded: “We ask you from the bottom of our hearts: act now before it is too late. We need a completely new beginning in the sporting field in order to maintain the small chance of staying in the league.” Thiele has been in office at Ulm since summer 2021, coach Glasbrenner only since the end of September. After initially getting seven points from three games, five defeats followed in a row. If the two leading players have their way, no one will be added.
Vice-captain Dennis Dressel had indicated a similar demand after the Rostock game. “We have to completely reorganize ourselves during the international break!” There’s a lot to work through, “not just small adjustments, but brutal things. We don’t even have to start from scratch. But from minus something.”