Learn about Max Eberl’s incredible story and his time at Borussia Mönchengladbach, where his traces will go down in history.
Revealed by Bayern Munich, for which he played only one game with the first team, Max Eberl would pass through Bochum and Greuther Furth, before arriving in Borussia Mönchengladbach in early 1999 at the age of 25. Perhaps he could not have imagined that this would be the beginning of a passage that lasted more than two decades.
In the first half, a hit. Borussia Mönchengladbach finished at the end of the league in 1998-99 and suffered an unprecedented relegation. Since joining the Bundesliga in 1965-66, the club has never left the first division. With Eberl, the team will return to the elite in 2001, but they were certainly not closer to their best days.
Manziat, who were five times national champions in the 1970s, always finished third and fourth between 1983-84 and 1986-97, and finished fourth in 1995-96, became full supporters.
Since returning to the elite, the club has never moved from 10th place until it was relegated to last place in 2006-07.. At that time, Eberl had already retired after 146 appearances at Borussia by 2004. The following year, he became the base coordinator and will continue to play in 2008, the same year Gladbach returned to first place.
Eberl obtained a higher position on the board in 2010, a decade in which Gladbach would be reborn forever. After the discreet campaigns of 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 – the latter finished in 16th place and had to play the playoffs to avoid relegation – the situation would change from there.
From 2011-12, colts do not know what it is like to finish the championship after ninth place, with the most important points for the fourth place in 2011-12, 2015-16 and 2019-20 and the third place in 2014-15.
Good choices as a coach Lucien Favre and Marco Rose were important in the recovery of this club, as well as in the precise signatures.
In a text on the Bundesliga website four years ago, called “Max Eberl: the man who turns the foal into a pure breed”, there are examples of footballers who had a great growth at the club, such as Marco Reus -Andre has Stegen and Granit Xhaka.
“I remember Hans Meyer (former coach and now a member of the Gladbach management) asking me about the signing of Marco Reus,” Eberl said in an interview with the Bundesliga.
Today, the Borussia Dortmund captain was at Rot Weiss-Ahlen in 2008-09, before going to Gladbach.
“Max, don’t you think that 800,000 euros for a second-tier player who scored four goals is a lot of money?” Eberl remembered talking as if it were Meyer.
“If Hans Meyer says something like that, then you might be unsure. But Marco totally convinced me. My gut told me that we would potentially buy there, even if 800,000 euros would be a lot of money at the time. for Gladbach.
Reus will be voted Bundesliga Player of the Year 2011-12 before returning to Dortmund. It was the big name of a Gladbach who went from 16th in 2010-11 to fourth the following season.
Years later, the free signing of Florian Neuhaus with Munich 1860 in 2017 or the 9 million euros invested for the removal of Marcus Thuram from Guingamp in mid-2019, for example, shows that the management of the Borussia club is still very sharp in the art of seeing talent.
In other words, the names in the cast changed, though Eberl continued there, as did the club’s success. While his days as a supporter and even as a struggle not to be left behind at Mönchengladbach, the future seems to be tied to his sporting director. He even renewed his contract at the end of December until mid-2026, which will make him more than 27 years old in a club that reached 25 for a history that began with demotion before becoming a real ransom.