Switzerland coach Ottmar Hitzfeld will quit after the World Cup in Brazil next year, he told a news conference yesterday, less than a week after guiding his side to the finals.
The 64-year-old German, one of Europe’s most successful coaches, said it was the most difficult decision of his career, but that he could “live without soccer.”
Hitzfeld, who won the Bundesliga five times with Bayern Munich and twice with Borussia Dortmund, as well as the Champions League with both clubs, took over from Koebi Kuhn in 2008.
Photo: EPA
His reign began disastrously with a home defeat against Luxembourg in a World Cup qualifier in one of his first games, but Switzerland recovered to reach the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Unbeaten in 14 games, Switzerland won seven and drew three of their 2014 qualifiers and also beat Brazil in a friendly in August.
Those results helped catapult them to seventh in the FIFA rankings and means they will be seeded at the World Cup draw in December, ahead of teams such as Italy and England.
“After the World Cup in Brazil, I will be 65 years old,” Hitzfeld told reporters at the Swiss federation’s headquarters. “After 30 years in the strength-sapping world of soccer, my time has come to stop.”
“I can live without soccer, there are more important things in life and my wife will be happy about this,” he said.
However, he will continue his work as a television analyst with a German cable network.
“I like doing it, I’m always right,” he said.
Hitzfeld has been helped by Switzerland’s successful youth development policy, which has also been hailed as an example of successful integration in a country sometimes criticized for its treatment of immigrants.
Almost half the Swiss squad consists of players from immigrant backgrounds, particularly Kosovo. Several, such as Xherdan Shaqiri (Bayern Munich), Blerim Dzemaili, Gokhan Inler and Valon Behrami (all SSC Napoli) have graduated to play with top European clubs.
Hitzfeld has long had connections with Switzerland. He was born near Basel, on the other side of the border, and speaks the local Swiss dialect.
He spent a considerable part of his playing career in the country and also began his coaching career there, back in 1983.
Perhaps not surprisingly for a former math teacher, Hitzfeld prepares for matches with geometric precision although he can also think on his feet and find a quick solution when things do not go according to plan.
His management of players is generally considered excellent, so much so that former Daimler-Chrysler chief Juergen Schrempp once described him as a role model for German business leaders.
For all his success, Hitzfeld’s career has also been marked by the spectacular 2-1 loss to Manchester United in the 1999 Champions League final, when his Bayern side led for almost the entire game, but capitulated in the dying minutes.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier