This Saturday, Adi Hütter will have spent exactly 1,000 days as head coach of Eintracht Frankfurt! Of the current Bundesliga coaches, only perennial SC Freiburg boss Christian Streich (over nine years) and SV Werder Bremen’s Florian Kohfeldt (three years and four months) have been in their posts for longer.
133 matches – more than for any other club
Since the Bundesliga came into being, Eintracht have only had five coaches who have been in charge of the club for longer. Erich Ribbeck and Friedhelm Funkel are ahead of the pack with five full seasons each, while Elek Schwartz, Dietrich Weise twice and Armin Veh each lasted for three years, give or take. Hütter’s reign at the Deutsche Bank Park is of course far from over, and he has also been in charge of more matches here than at any other club in his 13-year career as a head coach. Match number 133 was the 5-2 win over 1. FC Union Berlin, and that equalled the number of games that he had been in the dugout for at Young Boys.
In this relatively short time, the Austrian has already enjoyed plenty of success with the club, including semi-finals in the UEFA Europa League and the DFB Cup, qualification for Europe and of course the current fourth place in the league. Those heady European nights and an incredible 5-1 win over FC Bayern Munich are the standout highlights of his first 1,000 days in charge – and there will hopefully be much more to come, with Hütter under contract in Frankfurt until 30 June 2023.
Loyal coaching staff
Hütter’s entire coaching staff are very much part of the success story. Assistant coach Christian Peintinger has been his trusted lieutenant for almost six years now, and the two are close friends off the pitch. Armin Reutershahn occupies the same post and has done so for over 400 matches with Eintracht Frankfurt in two separate spells, while Jan Zimmermann joined the Eagles as a nine-year-old before going on to play in the Bundesliga. He then returned to the club a few years later and made the smooth transition in 2020 from player to goalkeeping coach.
Hütter certainly has cause to celebrate his 1,000th day at Eintracht Frankfurt, with the Eagles as high in the Bundesliga as they have ever been 26 matches into a season.
