“You need a partner who can live with a madman” – The job of a professional trainer between passion and existential fears. We look behind the scenes of being a coach in professional football.
In this episode we take a short excursion into the world of professional football and speak to the Austrian professional football coach, sports scientist and physiotherapist Klaus Schmidt. This resulted in one of the most authentic and personal conversations that Karl Schwarzenbrunner has ever had in our podcast.
Klaus Schmidt, who was most recently under contract as head coach at the Austrian Bundesliga club TSV Hartberg and was previously an active player himself, can already look back on a successful career. His extraordinary career began with training as a physiotherapist and studying sports science. After a short time he was promoted to assistant coach at Grazer AK, who had previously hired him as a physiotherapist. After several positions as an assistant coach, both in Austria and the United Arab Emirates, he took on his first coaching position at Bundesliga club Kapfenberger SV in 2012.
We spoke to the 55-year-old about whether you have to have played first-class football in order to be able to gain a foothold in the professional business as a coach. The same question also applies to admission to the UEFA Pro license, the highest license level in football. Here Klaus gives us an insight into the dramas that take place when applying for this training, which is only offered every two years in Austria.
Another point is the external impact - after some time, every coach develops a certain reputation or receives a certain image that is imposed on him, especially by the media. How can you free yourself from this box and should you free yourself at all?
In addition to other topics such as your own coaching philosophy, objective player evaluation, dealing with young players and growing coaching staffs, we talk to Klaus about the enormous challenge of combining a coaching career and a family life. Of course, every career is different, but Klaus tells us extremely honestly how his path went and how existential fears still accompany him today.
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