Hertha sacks Skibbe
February 12, 2012Bundesliga soccer club Hertha Berlin has fired head coach Michael Skibbe, less than two months after he took the job.
The news website Bild.de reported on Sunday that the 46-year-old Skibbe had been sacked just hours after Hertha suffered an embarrassing 5-0 defeat in Stuttgart on Saturday. Skibbe was given the news by Hertha manager Michael Preetz on Sunday morning, according to the Bild.de report.
Hertha’s captain, Andre Mijatovic, has since confirmed the news.
"That’s the way this business is," Mijatovic told the dpa news agency. "Now we need to try to pull out of this crisis."
The captain said the team had been informed of the club’s decision prior to its Sunday morning training session.
It wasn’t immediately clear who would be on the bench for Hertha's next game, at home against defending champions Borussia Dortmund on Saturday. It was speculated that Hertha's under-19s coach Rene Tretschok could be an interim solution.
The pressure on Skibbe increased after Berlin were knocked out of the German Cup in a 2-0 quarterfinal defeat by Borussia Mönchengladbach earlier this week.
This is the second time this season that Hertha have fired their coach, after the team sacked Markus Babbel back in December. Babbel was hired as the new coach of Hoffenheim on Friday.
Hertha failed to win a single game during Skibbe's five matches in charge. The club is currently in 15th place in the Bundesliga standings, just two points above the relegation playoff zone.
'Absolute catastrophe'
The final straw clearly came in Saturday’s 5-0 drubbing, which Skibbe described as an "absolute catastrophe."
Parting company with Skibbe promises to be a costly proposition for the Bundesliga club, as his contract runs until 2014. To hire him in the first place, Hertha was forced to pay an undisclosed fee in compensation to the Turkish club Eskisehirspor, where he had been under contract.
Skibbe is the fifth Bundesliga coach to be fired this season after Babbel, Michael Oenning (Hamburg), Marcus Sorg (Freiburg) and Holger Stanislawski (Hoffenheim).
pfd/cmk (sid, dpa)