Wimmer and Maaßen touted as candidates to work Lautern bench

Two head-coaches recently active in the German top flight are being linked with the now officially vacant trainer position at 2. Bundesliga side 1. FC Kaiserslautern. 

Second division side 1. FC Kaiserslautern, somewhat surprisingly, opted to part company with the head-coach who led them back to the 2. Bundesliga via the 2021/22 relegation promotion playoffs and helped the club establish themselves in the German “unterhaus” over the past two seasons on Thursday morning. Highly-experienced and well-regarded trainer Dirk Schuster was let go by the Pfälzer after a poor run-of-form saw Lautern obtain just five points in the league since October. A win over top-side 1. FC Köln wasn’t enough to save Schuster after he lost his last three league fixtures.

The Palatinate club – currently occupying 11th place in the 2. Bundesliga table – hope to recapture some of the promising form from earlier in the season via the installation of a new gaffer. German journalists Benni Hofmann and Moritz Kreilinger of Germany’s preeminent footballing publication report that two trainers recently active in the German top-flight are being considered by FCK managing director Thomas Hengen: newly unemployed former Augsburg trainer Enrico Maaßen and former Stuttgart interim head coach Michael Wimmer.

Maaßen might prove the easier catch as the 39-year-old’s contract with the Fuggerstädter was torn up by mutual consent shortly after his firing last month. Wimmer currently works the Austria Wien bench, but would presumably be interested in the opportunity to return to the Bundesrepublik. Wimmer served as interim trainer for VfB Stuttgart between the coaching regimes of Pellegrino Matarazzo and Bruno Labbadia last year. The Swabians recorded two league wins and two losses in the four fixtures under his command.

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