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Struggling Bundesliga 2 side VfL Bochum on Sunday evening named Indian origin Robin Dutt as their new head coach. The 53 year old replaces Jens Rasiejewski, who was fired by the club on Wednesday. Dutt will be Bochum’s fourth head coach in the ongoing 2017/18 season.
“He (Robin Dutt) is the experienced coach I was looking for the team, my desired candidate,” Sebastian Schindzielorz, the new Sporting Director at VfL Bochum said in a first statement. “Robin Dutt knows the Bundesliga and the Bundesliga 2 very well and he has proven that he has the solutions to be successful in critical situations. I’m convinced that we will avoid relegation with him in charge.”
Experienced Robin Dutt has coached at the highest level in Germany with SC Freiburg, Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Werder Bremen besides having been the Sporting Director of the German Football Association (DFB) during his illustrious career in professional football. He is the only Indian origin head coach who has coached in one of Europe’s top leagues (Bundesliga).
“I’m very happy to be part of the new team around Sports Director Sebastian Schindzielorz,” the 53-year-old was quoted in a press release. “Together with Heiko Butscher, whom I already know and respect from our time in Freiburg, and the entire coaching team, we will do our utmost to create a spirit of optimism and achieve the necessary results.”
Robin Dutt will be officially presented to the public during a press conference on Monday, February 12.
More about ROBIN DUTT
Robin was born in 1965 in Cologne to a German mother and an Indian Bengali father and was mainly brought-up in the southwest of Germany, in the Stuttgart region. As a football player he never made it big, playing amateur football in the fifth, sixth, seventh divisions.
Robin’s coaching career started with the TSG Leonberg whom he coached until 1999, while he was winding down his playing career and they gained promotion to the next higher division in the last year. He then joined TSF Ditzingen, first as their second team coach and then coaching the first team. This brought him for the first time into the limelight locally and he then went on to join former Bundesliga side Stuttgarter Kickers as their second team coach in summer 2002. Doing good work at the club, the Kickers gave Robin a chance as their first team coach on Oktober 28, 2003 and he would guide the club well with a young team in the Regionalliga (third division) in difficult times as the club didn’t have the necessary funds. The highlight came in the 2006/07 season when the Kickers beat Bundesliga side Hamburger SV 4-3 in extra time in the German Cup.
The name Robin Dutt was suddenly known across Germany. And the first offers from Bundesliga clubs came in. But Robin decided to take up the job at Bundesliga 2 club SC Freiburg in summer 2007. It was the end of an era as previous coach Volker Finke had coached Freiburg for 16 years. The going initially wasn’t easy for Robin, but in year two he was able to win the Bundesliga 2 title and Freiburg was back in the Bundesliga after four years.
After four years in Freiburg, Robin Dutt joined Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the summer of 2011, but he lost his job after only nine months.
Thereafter in August 2012 Robin was made the Director of Sports at the German FA (DFB), but only after a few months he realised that he preferred to be a coach on the touchline.
He left the DFB and joined Werder Bremen in May 2013, but after only 15 months in-charge he was released by them in October 2014.
Thereafter Robin Dutt became a Board Member at VfB Stuttgart in January 2015 but after relegation in May 2016 he was sacked from his post.
Now he is back again with VfL Bochum, whose primary aim this season is only to remain in Bundesliga 2 after a dismal season.
