When Erik ten Hag was unveiled as Bayer Leverkusen’s new manager on May 26, he hailed the prospect of inheriting the Bundesliga runners-up as “an attractive challenge”. It would turn ugly very quickly for the former Manchester United manager.
On Sep. 1, just two games into the new Bundesliga season, Ten Hag was unceremoniously sacked. Never before in the history of the German top flight had a manager lasted only 180 minutes of football, but as Leverkusen’s surprisingly candid upper management subsequently admitted, the doubts began back in pre-season.
A failure to connect with any of his new colleagues, those above and below him in the pecking order as well as the players, is billed as the root cause behind Ten Hag’s humiliating exit by SPORT BILD. The detailed report not only outlines how this trust crumbled away as quickly as it was formed, but claimed that Ten Hag’s exit was as expensive as it was historic.
When his salary and compensation fee are taken into consideration, the Dutch boss is thought to have cost Leverkusen €6 million (£5.2 million, $7 million) for two months of work.
Ejected From the Inner Circle
In his sharp-tongued farewell message, Ten Hag claimed that his arrangement with the club hierarchy “was never a relationship based on mutual trust”, evident in the transfer activity conducted by the club which reportedly took place behind his back.
Perhaps wary of repeating the mistakes made by Manchester United—who spent eye-watering sums on players expressly recommended by the Dutch coach only to watch them struggle—Leverkusen quickly removed Ten Hag from the club’s “inner circle”.
Sporting director Simon Rolfes and club CEO Fernando Carro had previously formed a formidable trident with former manager Xabi Alonso. The new Real Madrid boss still had a closer connection to the Bundesliga club than Ten Hag as he discovered that Lucas Vázquez would be moving to Leverkusen before his successor at the BayArena, who only spoke to the Spanish fullback two days after the deal had already been agreed.
Ten Hag’s repeated public pleas for new players and the bizarrely firm stance he took against Granit Xhaka’s exit—which came after the club had already agreed his sale to Sunderland—ultimately convinced Rolfes and Carro to operate without their manager’s input.
For a manager who used to ensure that an email was sent out to all United players telling them which colour socks to wear for each day of pre-season, not having a say in the identity of his club’s signings must have grated.
Failed Internal Connections
According to internal sources at the club cited by SPORT BILD, Ten Hag “turned all departments, bodies, and players against him.” The abrasive Dutch coach supposedly “couldn’t connect with anyone.”
That Ten Hag’s personal skills have come under fire may not be a surprise. This is, after all, a coach who once mused that taking tough decisions is “the difference between a manager and a human being.”
It was inaction rather than any wayward decisions which seemed to get him off to such a bad start in Leverkusen.
Tactical Confusion
Ahead of the first Bundesliga game of the season, which transpired to be an insipid 2–1 defeat to relegation candidates Hoffenheim, Ten Hag left his new players baffled when he refrained from conducting any pre-match team talk.
There appears to have been a general sense of uncertainty when it comes to the players’ duties on the pitch throughout Ten Hag’s brief reign. After giving up a 3–1 lead away to Werder Bremen last weekend, Leverkusen captain Robert Andrich lamented: “We must start playing as a team immediately, otherwise we won’t win any matches.”
“No one knew what to do,” was the accusation levelled against Ten Hag by SPORT BILD, as players seemed perplexed by his obsession with push-ups during training sessions. Physical challenges were a fixture of his spell at Manchester United; after losing his second game in charge against Brentford, Ten Hag made his players come in on their day off to make up the difference in distance covered by the two teams.
That approach eventually inspired an uptick in output at Old Trafford, but Ten Hag never hung around long enough at Leverkusen to even begin to see if his methods would work.
“In football,” the Dutch boss once said, “it is eat or get eaten.” He has experienced more of the latter in each of his last two posts.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Erik ten Hag: How Ex-Man Utd Boss Spiralled Towards Humiliating Bayer Leverkusen Sacking.