Everything you need to know about Andre Breitenreiter as Huddersfield Town unveil new gaffer
The new head coach has had a storied career in Germany and Switzerland that includes two promotions and a top-flight league title
Andre Breitenreiter has been unveiled as Huddersfield Town’s next head coach after agreeing to a two-and-a-half year deal, and is set to take charge following this weekend’s visit from Hull City. Jon Worthington will remain in caretaker charge for that game.
Far from a household name in the UK, Breitenreiter is better-known in his native Germany, where he has two promotions to the Bundesliga on his CV, and in Switzerland, where he led Zurich to the top-flight title in 2022.
Club statement
Huddersfield Town owner and chairman Kevin Nagle said in a club statement: “I’m very excited about Andre’s appointment.
“At the start of this process, we were very clear on what we expect our head coach to deliver. Atop that list was the creation of a winning culture, where there is no fear over taking bold options to try and get all three points in every game – before match day or during the game. We also want to deliver a type of football that will excite our supporters, who love a high-tempo, front-foot, all-action style.
“We believe Andre is the ideal candidate to deliver this. His credentials as a winner are there for all to see and, upon speaking to him, I was very impressed with his depth of knowledge. I’m excited to see the impact he has on our talented squad.
“I must also take this opportunity to thank Jon Worthington, Kevin Russell, Michael Tonge, and Neil Bennett for their outstanding work as our interim management team. They are true professionals and have made themselves and everyone connected with the club proud.”
Huddersfield Town Sporting Director Mark Cartwright added: “Andre was someone we were very interested in speaking with from an early point of our search. His record as a head coach is unquestionable, having overachieved with several different clubs to win titles and promotions in Germany and Switzerland.
“His philosophy on football fits what we were looking for in our next head coach and, when we began to speak about the opportunity, his confidence in his methods was very clear. He’s determined to show that his qualities as a head coach will work in England, and he’s excited about Kevin’s ambition for the future.
“We believe Andre has the skillset to positively impact our squad in the remaining games of this season, and that together we can build something really exciting for our fans in the future.”
Two promotions
Breitenreiter’s first promotion came with Paderborn in 2013/14 – the first time the club had ever reached the top flight. Paderborn had been widely fancied for relegation from 2. Bundesliga during that campaign and had a poor start to the season with just nine points from their first nine games. Even so, they ended up finishing as runners-up to achieve automatic promotion, with Elias Kachunga playing a key role.
Breitenreiter was unable to keep Paderborn up the following year, but had impressed enough to earn the job at Schalke, who he guided to a fifth-place finish in 2015/16 – just three points off a Champions League place, and an improvement on having finished sixth the year before. However, a change of sporting director towards the end of that season also led to a change of manager.
Once again Breitenreiter found himself managing in the second tier for his next job, joining Hannover for the final two months of the season and giving the side the final push over the line after Daniel Stendel was sacked in something of a Lee Clark/Simon Grayson scenario.
Breitenreiter subsequently succeeded in keeping Hannover in the top flight the following year, with a blistering start to the campaign enough for them to finish comfortably clear of the drop in 13th despite a decline in form at the end of the season.
He was dismissed midway through the 2018/19 season after a string of poor results saw them fall into the relegation zone. I think we can all see a particular parallel there.
Top-flight title triumph and style of play
Following a spell out of the game for family reasons, Breitenreiter took over at FC Zurich in 2021. The side had just finished 8th in the ten-team league when he arrived, but under his management, the club broke years of dominance by Basel and Young Boys to claim the league by 12 clear points.
That season, in particular, earned Breitenreiter plaudits for his ‘high-pressing, high pace, high energy counter-attacking style’ despite ‘very limited resources [and a lack of] quality players relative to the opposition’.
He is fond of exactly the kind of quick, forward-looking transitional play that served Town so well under Neil Warnock last season and has paid big dividends for them under Jon Worthington’s caretaker charge over the past three games.
That also means that Breitenreiter is used to managing sides who do not expect to have tonnes of time on the ball. His style has been compared to the sharp, incisive football Leicester City played in their 5,000/1 Premier League title win of 2015/16.
How Breitenreiter might suit Town
Breitenreiter is known to be adaptable to his squad’s strengths: at some clubs he has preferred 4-4-2, 4-2-2-2, or 4-2-3-1, while at Zurich he often opted for a 3-1-4-2.
The apparent constants whatever shape he plays are a fondness for having at least one holding midfielder sitting deep to give the centre-backs someone to play through (enter Alex Matos and Jonathan Hogg), and a penchant for using wide players as the primary sources of creation, as is so often the case for counter-attacking sides.
That, too, has been a hallmark of where Town have done well under Worthington, with Sorba Thomas and Brodie Spencer springing to mind as potential key players under the new manager.
Spencer is also a great case in point for another key element that will have attracted Town to Breitenreiter: he has made a point of bringing through the likes of Leroy Sane, Max Meyer and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg at Schalke and a teenage Wilfried Gnonto at Zurich. He has spoken of his understanding that developing youngsters to sell for big mark-ups is a vital strategy for upwardly mobile clubs of limited means – another reality of life at Huddersfield Town.
Potential negatives
On the downside, things did not work out for Breitenreiter in his last job, back in the Bundesliga with Hoffenheim.
A rotten and extended winless run set in after a positive start to the season and left the club scrambling to get out of the relegation zone, eventually succeeding only after replacing Breitenreiter with Pellegrino Matarazzo. Breitenreiter, for his part, has spoken of divisions within the club that worked against his chances of success.
German football writers have also remarked that Breitenreiter’s sides tend not to keep many clean sheets, but that is always a risk when it comes to this style of play. Consider Town getting promoted with a negative goal difference in 2016/17, or Warnock’s side taking 21 points from their final ten games of last season despite keeping just two clean sheets and conceding 11.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, a club of Town’s standing, who have battled relegation from the Championship in four of their five seasons since coming down from the Premier League, were always unlikely to attract a manager whose CV contains nothing but uninterrupted and unbridled success.
You can understand why two promotions from the German second tier, survival from subsequent relegation with one of those clubs, qualification for the Europa League with Schalke, and a top-flight title with Zurich would set Breitenreiter apart from the rest of the available candidates.
The sense upon Moore’s dismissal was that the club wanted someone who would take some of the principles of that style and build on it, but we spoke in the conclusions on Wednesday night’s victory over Sunderland about how leaning into that, as Worthington did, had to be the blueprint now for whoever took the job on a permanent basis.
With Breitenreiter they have done that, sensibly opting for a manager whose style of play tallies more closely with the squad’s existing strengths: athleticism, hard work, and swift counter-attacking football.
As ever with left-field appointments from abroad, there will be doubts about Breitenreiter’s ability to adapt to English football, but the fact he has already achieved such great success in his one venture away from his homeland does take the edge off those concerns.