After just a short time, Fabian Hürzeler has noticed big differences between the Premier League and the Bundesliga. In an interview, the Brighton coach talks about his boss – and English lessons
The start to the season that Brighton & Hove Albion have made under Fabian Hürzeler fits in perfectly with the big goals that the club and its new coach have set themselves. Four competitive games, three wins, a 1-1 draw with runners-up Arsenal – and the many expensive new signings have hardly been used.
“An extremely successful foundation has been built here in recent years. We want to build on that. I’m not going to come here and turn everything around 180 degrees,” said Hürzeler in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. And yet he wants to go one better with last year’s eleventh-placed team
Hürzeler wants to get Brighton “out of the comfort zone ”
Club owner Tony Bloom has “clearly underlined his ambitions” with the transfer spending – with Europe’s highest transfer fee minus this summer, says Hürzeler. “The whole club is ambitious.” He also sees his task as coach as “getting the players and staff out of their comfort zone in order to take the next step and implement a culture of winning. We have to want to win with everything we have. Without losing the family, the community spirit that has made Brighton & Hove Albion strong. This balance is important.” Hürzeler also takes English lessons twice a week for this – “because it comes across differently when you have a perfect command of the expressions in English.”
At the age of 31, the Texan has Bloom’s database to thank for the fact that he has been the youngest head coach in Premier League history since the summer. The poker millionaire “scouts coaches just like he does his players. Clearly with an algorithm, clearly data-based. As he told me, my data was incredibly good, he almost couldn’t believe it,” reports Hürzeler. There were also “a lot of similarities” in the conversation afterwards, both in terms of mentality and ambition.
“When I turn on Union Berlin against St. Pauli on a Friday night… ”
Hürzeler already likes English soccer. “The referee lets the ball flow more and the crowd really gets into it. When there’s good action, the crowd is strong and loud and it can get really emotional. The fans don’t sing all the time like in Germany, but simply react very much to the behavior on the pitch. But it’s also quiet at times. The fact that the referees let the ball flow more makes the game more intense, wilder, you have a lot of switching moments.”
And how do the English look at German soccer? “They are relatively uninterested in the Bundesliga,” Hürzeler has found. “When I turn on Union Berlin against St. Pauli on a Friday evening, the room empties relatively quickly. “
