Madrid: Spanish champions Real Madrid appointed former German international Bernd Schuster as their new coach on Monday.
The 47-year-old, who has coached Getafe for the last two seasons, replaces Fabio Capello, who was sacked at the end of June after leading the club to their first league title in four years.
Real said they would present the German to the media at a news conference at the Bernabeu at 1115 GMT.
Schuster, who has coached Primera Liga side Getafe for the last two seasons, is the eighth occupant of the Real Madrid bench in a little over four years.
The German has been set the task of emulating Capello's success but at the same time ensuring that the team plays the sort of crowd-pleasing, attacking football demanded by the club and its fans.
The former Real, Atletico and Barcelona midfielder was reported to have bought himself out of his contract with Getafe by paying a compensation fee of 4,80,000 euros thus allowing him to make the switch to the nine times European champions.
Schuster steered the modest Madrid-based side to consecutive ninth-placed finishes in the Primera Liga and to a first ever final of the King's Cup, where they lost 1-0 to Sevilla.
Season upset
Getafe caused the upset of the season when they came back from a 5-2 first-leg loss against Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Cup to inflict a humiliating 4-0 defeat on the Catalans in the return.
Prior to the Getafe job, Schuster had a brief spell in charge of Levante.
The team got off to a flying start, but faded badly in the second half of the season and Schuster was fired four games from the end of the campaign that ended with relegation.
His only other top-flight experience came with Ukraine side Shakhtar Donetsk between 2003-04.
Once again his team got off to a god start but they hit problems towards the end of the season and he was fired when they fell behind arch-rivals Dynamo Kiev.
A confident and out-spoken figure, Schuster had a series of high-profile arguments with several of his clubs as a player, sitting out a season while at Barcelona because of a legal dispute and being barred from playing while at Bayer Leverkusen.
He has made no secret of his desire to take charge at Real and has been linked with the job since midway through last season.
Meanwhile, Getafe have appointed former Denmark international Michael Laudrup as their coach in place of Schuster who was named as the new boss of Real Madrid on Monday.
Getafe said the 43-year-old Laudrup had agreed a two-year contract with the club who will be playing in the UEFA Cup next season.
Laudrup, a talented midfielder who played for Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid, worked as assistant to Denmark coach Morten Olsen between 2000 and 2002 before taking up his first managerial post at former club Brondby.
He won two Cups and one league title with Brondby, including the double in 2005, before resigning in 2006.
As a player he won four consecutive league titles and the European Cup in the early 1990s as a member of Johan Cruyff's Dream Team at Barcelona, going on to join Real Madrid where he won a fifth Spanish title in 1995.
Getafe have finished in ninth place in the Primera Liga in the last two seasons and made the UEFA Cup for the first time after reaching the King's Cup final where they lost 1-0 to Sevilla who had already qualified for the Champions League.
Comments
0 comment