This Tuesday, Markus Krösche starts his position as the new board member at Eintracht Frankfurt. In 1999, he captained the Werder Bremen U19s to the national title. His breakthrough as a professional came in 2001 at Paderborn, where he carved out a legacy for himself over a 13-year spell, which included promotion to the second division in 2005 and 2009 and finally to the Bundesliga in 2014. After a club-record 373 appearances, he retired as captain at the peak of his footballing powers.
Almost seamlessly, he then took charge of the Paderborn U23 side, who were playing in the Westfalenliga (sixth tier) at the time, and achieved promotion after just one season. Alongside this, Krösche acquired all his coaching licences in next to no time, successfully completing the course to become a football coach in 2018.
Rapid rise
In 2015, his former head coach Roger Schmidt decided that he could use Krösche’s leadership skills, and recruited him as assistant coach at Bayer Leverkusen. It was the first taste of the Bundesliga for a man who made 193 appearances in the second tier.
Krösche was relieved of his duties along with Schmidt in 2017, but less than two weeks later, he returned to his long-time home and took up the post of managing director for sport at Paderborn. A close brush with relegation to the Regionalliga was followed by the ascent from the third to the first division. By summer 2019, Krösche could look back on two DFB Cup quarter-final appearances, 166 goals scored and, last but not least, the return to Germany’s top flight.
As a result, Leipzig came calling ahead of the 2019/20 campaign, as Krösche made the step up to a Champions League club. Leipzig reached the semi-finals of Europe’s premier club competition in 2020, and finished the season just gone as runners-up in both the league and DFB Cup.
