Yesterday Lautern fired Coach Erik Gerets, today they hired Austrian Kurt Jara, who has been with Hamburg until November. The officials hoped to see some upswing after the winter break, but the 1:2 loss at 1860 was too much for them. Quite an odd moment to fire a coach one matchday after the winter break and short after the transfer window closed as the new coach now doesn't really have much influence on the roster. Oddly Lautern transfered Steffen Freund and Markus Anfang a week ago on Gerets' demand - questionable if Jara likes this decision...
I was suprised by the timing as well. I would think if you were that close to making a move, you would do it before the xfer window, allowing your new manager to make some adjustments. Also knowing that Klose will be gone anyway, why dont you give more time to reorganize?
keep dreaming: a club handling money like an Italian doesn't belong in the first Bundesliga! or you sell yourself to the Russians ;-)
I believe in the miracle! The devils will remember the ghost of Fritz Walter and stay in 1 liga where the belong!
I'm sure Jara will save Kaiserslautern from relegation. But he isn't the coach to build a new team in the way the KAiserslautern management wants it. I often heard Jaeggi say that Kaiserslautern must build a new team with young players in the future and that they must put the emphasis on their youth system to create cheap new players instead of buying expensive ones from other clubs. Jara is not the coach who likes to work with young players. If he was given a free hand, he would create a team with an average age of around 30 for sure ( just look at what he did in Tirol, where he was allowed to create a team on his own...). My predicition : Jara will get fired in 2005...