Rhein Neckar Löwen fire coaches

Unexpected and rapid change at the Rhein Neckar Löwen:Despite qualifying for the VELUX EHF Men’s Champions League via the wild card tournament and despite four victories from five league matches the German club fired their Swedish coaches Ola Lindgren and Kent-Harry Andersson on Thursday afternoon. Less than 40 hours before their Champions League opener at FC Barcelona, the club announced Gudmundur Gudmundsson as their new coach. Thursday evening the Icelandic (46) signed a five-year contract at the Löwen until 2015. Up to now Gudmundur Gudmundsson was the sports director at the Löwen and the men in charge for the cooperation of the Germans with the Danish club AG Kopenhagen.

Nobody spoke openly before about the problems Lindgren and Andersson had with club chairman Jesper Nielsen, the Danish main sponsor of the Lions. Nielsen was the one to announce the reason for firing Lindgren and Andersson: “Maybe most people are surprised about the point in time we came to this decision. But I am not. I have high objectives with Löwen and I’m not convinced that we can reach those goals with Lindgren and Andersson. This became clear to me last month; therefore we had to pull the plug. It was not a panic reaction to something, but it was planned for a long time.”

Club manager Thorsten Storm thanked both former coaches for their work, but added to Jensen: “It wasn’t an easy decision, but all partners of our club board and board of management agreed to it.”

In 2008 the Löwen had sacked coach Iouri Chevtsov nearly at the same time in September, Wolfgang Schwenke took over for one season – despite the fact that Nielsen had an agreement with Noka Serdarusic, this cooperation failed for some reasons. In 2009 Ola Lindgren was signed as new coach, Kent-Harry Andersson arrived in Mannheim after being sacked in Flensburg. In their first coaching season the duo missed thetitle that Nielsen desired – Löwen lost the German Cup final, were eliminated in the Champions League quarterfinal by Kiel and missed the direct qualification for the CL by ranking only fourth in the Bundesliga. Thanks to three victories at the wild card tournament on home court they managed to go on to the VELUX EHF Champions League Group Phase. In former years the team was often changing a lot. But now the strategy should become long-termed, as Nielsen mentioned: “We extended the contracts with our key players for a long time, and we extended the contract with manager Thorsten Storm until 2015. So it’s logical to conclude a long-term contract with the coach. But right then I came to the cognition that we can’t reach our goals with Ola and Kent-Harry.” Storm shared this opinion: “We weren’t convinced of them by looking at the long-term development of the club.”

For Gudmundur Gudmundsson, who led the Icelandic men’s national team to the Silver medal at the Olympics in Beijing and was 236 times Icelandic international as a player, “the new job is an absolute challenge”, even as he knows the internal structure of the club and the team as their sports director. “The terms and conditions to work here are great.” Gudmundur Gudmundsson’s first match as a coach will be the VELUX EHF Champions League game on Saturday in Barcelona.