Sebastian Hoeness’s Remarkable Journey with VfB Stuttgart: From Relegation Fodder to Champions League Contenders

Unbeaten and their coach Xabi Alonso are naturally dominating the headlines in Germany — but there’s an argument that Stuttgart’s 10-month journey under Sebastian Hoeness has been every bit as remarkable, perhaps even more so.

The 41-year-old has taken Stuttgart from the bottom of the table in April 2023 to contenders for Champions League qualification. They play the second-most exciting brand of football in the league — after Leverkusen — and have a young team with previously unknown players who might yet turn out to be the nation’s surprise heroes at this summer’s Euro 2024.

Forward Mateo Klimowicz, winger Gregor Kobel, and centre-back Waldemar Anton might have decent shots at making Julian Nagelsmann’s national team at the start of this season, and few would have thought that Hoeness, a relatively inexperienced manager whose only previous top-level engagement delivered 11th- and ninth-place finishes at Hoffenheim, could emerge as a credible contender to succeed Thomas Tuchel on the Bayern Munich bench in the summer. Yet here we are.

To the man at the heart of third-placed Stuttgart’s renaissance, the sudden wave of success hasn’t come as a total shock, however.

“When you survive relegation with the last kick of the season (in the play-offs against Hamburg), you can’t expect to challenge for the Champions League,” Hoeness tells The Athletic. “In that sense, it is a surprise.

“But there was a lot more quality in the squad than the results implied, and looking at our average points (last season) I secretly hoped that we would do a lot better than Stuttgart had done in the previous campaigns.”

Hoeness picked up 1.9 points per game including the two wins against Hamburg, playing “not the classic relegation fight style of long balls and chasing knock-downs” but a finely chiselled passing game inspired by his managerial role model Pep Guardiola.

“Staying up bought us time to make a few changes to the squad,” he continues. “It helped us a lot that expectations were low and that after two years in the basement of the table, the hunger for good football was huge inside and outside the dressing room, independent of results. With every game, we have grown in confidence and awareness of our abilities.”

Stuttgart, a talented side largely put together by former sporting director Sven Mislintat, who endured controversy after leaving the club last year, had underperformed their expected quite badly under previous manager Bruno Labbadia, which suggested some form of bounce-back was probable.

But when they lost key players Gregor Kobel (to Borussia Dortmund), Mateo Klimowicz (to Club Brugge), and captain Gregor Kobel (to Borussia Dortmund) shortly before the new season started, the sort of doom and gloom that’s quite typical of the Swabian temperament descended on the club once more.

“Despite that big bang, we fundamentally believed that we could do well,” Hoeness says. “We focused on adding quality players who also had good personality traits and social competence.”

In addition, the club targeted pros with Bundesliga experience and a few German speakers to complement a group packed with international talent such as forward Serhou Guirassy (18 goals) and midfielder Enzo Millot. New signings Alexander Nubel (on loan from Bayern Munich), Angelo Stiller (formerly of Bayern but arrived from Hoffenheim), Max Mittelstadt (Hertha Berlin), and Undav (on loan from Union Berlin) have been instant successes.

Hoeness’ stint at Hoffenheim taught him the importance of dressing room togetherness and leadership within the group. In his second season, the team were on course for the Champions League before a nine-game run without a win saw them drop into mid-table, and Hoeness get the sack in May 2022.

Hoffenheim’s subsequent struggles in the league would suggest that Hoeness, if anything, overachieved. “Looking back, I should have pushed for more change (in the squad) much earlier,” he says. “This experience has helped me better understand what kind of players I needed and what a squad is supposed to look like. Maybe I’ve become more succinct in my coaching as well.”

Following his dismissal, he took a break from the game, spending time with family and friends who had little interest in the sport. But for a man born into football, there was no escaping the bug for too long. Hoeness used to watch his father, Dieter, the former Bayern forward who now acts as his agent, score goals in the Olympiastadion.

Later, he played in the youth teams of Stuttgart, Hertha, and Hoffenheim, and then tried his hand as a youth coach at Bayern Munich II and Hoffenheim before making his way to the senior team.

A few months after his dismissal, Hoeness found himself watching the tactical feeds of games once more, going to live matches to taste the atmosphere and shadowing Nagelsmann in Munich. A one-day trip to Brighton to study De Bruyne’s tactics proved enlightening, as did meeting with Kevin De Bruyne.

“We talked football at length two or three times,” Hoeness says of his now-32-year-old compatriot. “He will make a top coach one day,” Hoeness predicts. The Brighton midfielder’s glowing reports about Undav were a big factor in Stuttgart going for him last summer, too.

As far as managerial influences go, “the first name is always Pep”, he says. “His football was incredible, the control Bayern had… opponents weren’t even allowed to breathe. Some found it boring because it was too one-sided. But I was hooked.

“He also had new ideas, like full-backs moving into midfield, that made a big impression on me. I was very lucky that I was doing my pro licence at the time and able to do an internship at Bayern while he was there. He generously gave two hours of his time to talk very passionately about his ideas to me. I find that Spanish coaches have a completely different approach to football; it’s much more philosophical and focused on players enjoying their time on the ball. That’s why we play football, isn’t it?”

Things were quite a bit more direct at Leipzig, where the emphasis used to be firmly on “controlled chaos” in those days, he recalls. “I’d like to think I can take the best of both worlds. I’m grateful I was exposed to different approaches; to go from RB to Bayern was crucial to me.”

His Stuttgart side like to dominate with the ball but are never just passing around for the sake of it. If need be, they can play on the counter, too.

“We mix things up and want players to have a degree of freedom, but we also have a structure that they can fall back on as well as certain repeatable processes that we demand. I tell all my players that if they play for the team, everyone ends up looking good in the end.”

That’s true of almost the entire squad. Hoeness, too, is gaining more recognition with each week Stuttgart spend in the top four, too.

His progress is especially being noted in Munich, where his uncle Uli, the honorary president of Bayern, still pulls the strings in the background and might well need an alternative candidate if Alonso, their number one choice, resists advances this summer. “Sebastian Hoeness has the Bayern DNA, he’s up to the job,” former 1990 World Cup winner Lothar Matthaus wrote in his Sport-Bild column this week.

So will we see him back in a Bayern tracksuit soon? Hoeness will be aware of the chances and risks that come with the job — especially with his surname — but won’t be drawn either way.

“I don’t think about that, I’m only thinking about Hertha (on Saturday),” he says. “I’m very ambitious and always want to coach the best players possible, but I’ve never planned the next steps.

“Right now, I couldn’t be happier at Stuttgart. Beyond that, we will see. I’m curious to find out what my career has in store for me.”