Open words from Ottmar Hitzfeld
“I realize: I need help”
Updated on 11.08.2025 – 7:10 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Ottmar Hitzfeld openly reports like never about the challenges of his job. Mentally, he wasn’t just feeling bad. An event opened his eyes.
In the past, mental problems and exhaustion have prevented Ottmar Hitzfeld’s engagement as a national soccer coach. This emerges from the book “Mensch Football Star” of Swiss journalist Andreas Böni, which will be published on August 18, from which the “Bild” newspaper has already published extracts.
“For three days I lie almost only in bed and groom. It is brutal. On the one hand, the offer as a German national coach is tempting,” the now 76 -year -old Hitzfeld is quoted: “On the other hand, I know that I have no strength. I would have loved to have just pulled the blanket over my head.” Hitzfeld reports on back pain and sleep problems: “It is cruel if you suddenly have no strength.”
It was clear to him because of the mentally and physically stressful situation “that I reject the offer as a German national coach. You have to be rested for a new job. And honestly: at that time I never want to be a coach.”
For a year and a half, Hitzfeld retired to Engelberg to the Swiss mountains and takes a conscious break. “It was only almost three years later I am really ready to work again,” he said: “Since then, I have also made my cell phone silently. In the past, I always thought: Every message is important, I have to be reached day and night. That was the biggest mistake.”
The former trainer of Borussia Dortmund And Bayern Munich reported a particularly memorable moment. “I have my key experience in the car. I suddenly have a bad sense. I get shortness of breath, everything gets tight, a terrible feeling. It only gets better by cranking the windows,” it said from Hitzfeld: “I need help. I need help. This prescribes a psychiatrist. This prescribes tablets, antidepressants. They help me to calm me down.”
Again and again his body has sent him signals that everything would be too much. “The problem as a football coach is that your indoor and outdoor image sometimes diverge far apart. You cannot and do not want to show any weakness in public. You eat a lot into yourself,” said Hitzfeld.
He ignored the signals. “Because you think: it is impossible that I don’t do anything for three or four weeks now and just relax,” emphasized Hitzfeld. “You are caught in the hamster wheel. (…) Back then, before 2004, I slowly and continuously lost the strength: I can no longer switch it off.”