The question of what the club meant by calling Jan Siewert to the professional team “until further notice” came up more frequently around the change of coach at FSV Mainz 05 last weekend. Anyone who looks in the Duden will get an answer – it lists “with revocation, for the time being, provisionally, first of all” as synonyms. Anyone who spoke to Siewert’s superiors after the Bundesliga game against RB Leipzig, which he won 2-0, received no answers that went beyond the dictionary.
Sports director Martin Schmidt said that the previous U-23 coach had not worsened his chances of becoming a permanent solution with his success and had sent out the best possible application letter. Sports director Christian Heidel said the next day in the Sport 1 program “Doppelpass” that Siewert would certainly appear in the Bundesliga sooner or later – “maybe with us too”.
Should that happen, the 42-year-old football teacher, who started as head coach of the youth performance center on Bruchweg in 2020 and has led the second team in the Regionalliga Südwest since the summer of 2022, would follow paths that several Mainz head coaches have already taken: Thomas Tuchel stepped up A year in the A-Juniors including the championship title, Martin Schmidt had previously led the U23s into the third division, Sandro Schwarz rose above the U19s and U23s, and Bo Svensson, who was released last week at his own request, was training his Austrian interlude the U 16, U 17, and U 19.
Mainz now faces Darmstadt
It is not yet clear whether the club management trusts Siewert to lead the professionals from the relegation places to safe table regions or whether they are looking for an external solution. And the coach himself doesn’t seem to care – at least he assured before and after his second Bundesliga appearance (his first was in January 2021, a week before Svensson took up his duties) that he would not concern himself with this topic. “You can believe me that I only think about tomorrow,” he said after Mainz’s first league win after 14 match days.
Mainz 05 is already Siewert’s coaching station with the longest stay. The Mayen native, who was active for his hometown club in the Oberliga Südwest, worked for two years as a junior assistant coach at the DFB, in 2015/16 as head coach at Rot-Weiß Essen, then for a season as assistant and U-19 coach at VfL Bochum . During his year and a half at Borussia Dortmund, he played for promotion to the third division with the U23s before moving to Huddersfield Town in the Premier League. This engagement only lasted eight months.
Peter H. Eisenhuth, Mainz Published/Updated: Recommendations: 1 Michael Wittershagen Published/Updated: Recommendations: 61 A comment from Michael Wittershagen Published/Updated: Recommendations: 38
“Getting into the heads of the players” was the first task Siewert set out to do. The appearance of the team, which had been so unsettled recently, showed that he had succeeded in this. There was no longer any trace of blockade against RB, the team ran, fought and played convincing football after the half-time break. On Sunday, Siewert started working on the content with the squad, preparing for the game against relegation rivals Darmstadt 98 this Saturday (3:30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky). A further success would increase Siewert’s chances of canceling the “until further notice”.
