Borussia Mönchengladbach Faces Coaching Crisis After Bundesliga Start

Borussia Mönchengladbach are staring at a crisis after just three Bundesliga matchdays – and the hunt for a new head coach has turned urgent.

Sporting director Rouven Schröder reportedly has a budget of around four million euros to solve the problem on the touchline. That figure, reported by Bild, gives Gladbach room to move for a coach who is still under contract elsewhere. A compensation fee will not scare the club off if they believe they have found the right man.

Priske high on the list

One of those men is Brian Priske. The Sparta Prague coach is, according to Danish outlet Tipsbladet, high on Gladbach’s shortlist. The exact details of the 49-year-old Dane’s contract in the Czech top flight remain unclear, but that has not cooled interest from the Bundesliga strugglers.

Priske is not alone on the list. Bild also names Alexander Blessin, most recently at St. Pauli, Horst Steffen of SV Werder Bremen, Christian Eichner of Karlsruher SC and Steffen Baumgart, currently at Union Berlin, as candidates under consideration.

Schröder is not working alone on this. His predecessor, Roland Virkus, is heavily involved. Since July, Virkus has been operating in the Scouting & Recruitment department with a specific focus on “coach scouting” and is now helping sift through the options.

Baumgart and the Köln connection

Steffen Baumgart’s profile almost seems made for this kind of firefight. Before his current role in Berlin and a spell at HSV, he coached none other than Gladbach’s arch-rivals 1. FC Köln.

With Köln, Baumgart produced a remarkable first season. He hauled the Billy Goats to seventh place in the Bundesliga, good enough to book a place in the Conference League. The momentum did not last forever. In December 2023, after a sporting downturn, Köln and their long-popular coach went their separate ways, ending a run of 98 matches together.

That Köln past would not disqualify him in Gladbach. Quite the opposite. Decision-makers at Borussia see value in a coach who has already ridden out storms in the Rhineland and knows what it means to work under intense pressure. It is also said to count in his favour that he has already studied Gladbach in depth and would not need weeks of video analysis to get up to speed.

And the need for speed is obvious.

A brutal start and Polanski’s fall

Three games. Zero points. A goal difference of 3:12. Gladbach sit 17th in the Bundesliga table. Only HSV, still goalless with 0:12, are worse off.

The low point came last weekend. Borussia collapsed 5:0 away at SC Freiburg, a performance so alarming that it cost Eugen Polanski his job.

Polanski, 40, had initially stepped in as interim coach last season after the dismissal of Gerardo Seoane. Even before this campaign kicked off, doubts about his long-term suitability lingered. Promoted to head coach, he managed an average of just 1.10 points over 29 matches. The Freiburg debacle removed the last layer of protection around him.

Now the club must get the next decision right. With the table already squeezing them and the mood around the Foals darkening, four million euros is not just a budget line – it is a bet on who can drag Gladbach out of a spiral before the season’s story hardens into something far more dangerous.