First manager change odds and candidates – who will be the first to go?
Will it be a coach of a predicted relegation candidate or a coach of a team that had higher goals but is stuck in the bottom of the table right from the start due to a poor start to the season?
Which Bundesliga coach will be the first to go in the 2024/25 season?
These are the Bundesliga favorites for the first coach to be sacked this season
First manager change odds: Who will be the first to go?
First change of coach odds: Who goes first?
While only two of the 18 Bundesliga clubs started the upcoming season with a new head coach last season, things are a little different ahead of the 2024/25 season: No fewer than six coaches will be new to their teams at the start of the 2024 season.
This makes it very difficult to predict who the favorites for the first Bundesliga coaching change might be.
Who could be the top candidates in the bookmakers’ first manager change odds?
One favorite as the first Bundesliga coach change could be Gerardo Seoane, who finished in the bottom half of the table with Borussia Mönchengladbach last season and only one point ahead of the relegation zone in 14th place.
The Swiss, who has been in charge at Gladbach since July 1, will therefore be starting the new season with a certain burden. Accordingly, the bookmakers’ first change of manager odds could be the lowest for Seoane at the start of the season.
With Jess Thorup, there would be a second favorite in the first coach sacking predictions for the Bundesliga. The Dane has been at FC Augsburg since October 2023 and has kept FCA in the Bundesliga, although they lost their last five Bundesliga games of the previous season. If things continue in this vein, things could get tight for Thorup.
First change of coach Bundesliga 2024: Other favorites
Which candidates could there still be in the first change of coach odds? Which Bundesliga coach could be a contender for the first sacking in the 2024/25 season?
First and foremost, the coaches of the clubs expected to be in the relegation battle are at the forefront of the “first change of manager” predictions and betting odds. The head coaches of the two promoted teams have a certain bonus.
In this case, that applies to Holstein Kiel coach Marcel Rapp, who took the Storks into the Bundesliga for the first time in the club’s history.
FC St. Pauli is perhaps the exception here. The Hamburg club may have been promoted, but promotion coach Fabian Hürzeler is gone (went to Brighton in the Premier League). His successor is Alexander Blessin.
He does not have the “promotion bonus”, so if the start of the season goes wrong and the Kiezkickers are stuck in the basement of the table early on, there could be a rethink and perhaps the first Bundesliga coach change
There are also five other new coaches before the start of this Bundesliga season. What is their risk for the first coaching change in 2024?
Peter Zeidler is just as new at relegation candidates Bochum as Bo Svensson at Union Berlin. Will this duo come out on top in the bookmakers’ first manager change odds?
This question could also apply to Julian Schuster. He took over the difficult legacy of Christian Streich in Freiburg. It won’t be easy for Schuster in his Bundesliga debut season, but the Freiburg management won’t fire him at the first crisis.
This could also apply to Bayern coach Vincent Kompany, who has a kind of “dismissal protection” due to the wild hire & fire policy that has prevailed in Munich in recent years. Will this also apply to new BVB coach Nuri Sahin?
In Dortmund, the first Bundesliga coach change of the 2024/25 season could happen if BVB start with problems under new coach Nuri Sahin and can only follow the title race from afar again early on. What will the “First change of manager odds” look like?
The 18 Bundesliga coaches for the 2024/25 season
No coach can feel safe in the Bundesliga, but Leverkusen’s mastermind Xabi Alonso, for example, is considered very unlikely to go down in German soccer history as the first Bundesliga coach to change in 2024.
Heidenheim coach Frank Schmidt has been the head coach at FCH since 2007 and led the “village club” to the Bundesliga and even to the European Cup last season, finishing eighth in the table! It’s hard to imagine Schmidt being sacked in Heidenheim.
Even at VfB Stuttgart, Sebastian Hoeneß, after leading the Swabians to second place in the previous season, should probably not worry about being the first Bundesliga coach to be sacked in 2024.
We will see how grateful VfB are if things don’t go well at the start due to the squad changes. It’s possible that this will end very quickly if the season gets off to a poor start
How did the first Bundesliga coach sacking go in the past?
The first Bundesliga coach to be sacked was announced in Augsburg last season. Enrico Maaßen had to vacate his locker on October 9.
One season before that, RB Leipzig saw the first change of coach in the Bundesliga. Domenico Tedesco was dismissed after matchday 9.
In the 2020/21 season, the then Schalke coach David Wagner was the number 1 in the bookmakers’ odds to sack the coach right from the start. The prediction made at the time in the bookmakers’ “first change of manager odds” quickly came true: Wagner was sacked on matchday 2.
Wagner was only the fourth coach in the almost 60-year history of the Bundesliga to be sacked after matchday 2. Previously, this had only happened to Rinus Michels (Cologne 1983), Morten Olsen (Cologne 1995) and Dieter Hecking (Hannover 2009).
The first Bundesliga coach change in autumn 2019, on the other hand, was a real bombshell: Bayern coach Niko Kovac was sacked. That was at the beginning of November
The first Bundesliga coach dismissals since 2012
- 2023/24: Enrico Maaßen (FC Augsburg)
- 2022/23: Domenico Tedesco (RB Leipzig)
- 2021/22: Mark van Bommel (VfL Wolfsburg)
- 2020/21: David Wagner (Schalke 04)
- 2019/20: Niko Kovac (Bayern Munich)
- 2018/19: Tayfun Korkut (VfB Stuttgart)
- 2017/18: Andries Jonker (VfL Wolfsburg)
- 2016/17: Viktor Skripnik (Werder Bremen)
- 2015/16: Lucien Favre (Gladbach)
- 2014/15: Mirko Slomka (HSV)
- 2013/14: Bruno Labbadia (VfB Stuttgart)
- 2012/13: Felix Magath (VfL Wolfsburg)
Kovac was not the first Bundesliga coach to be sacked by VfL Wolfsburg in the 2023/24 season, but he had to go during the course of the season. And that should be a warning to Ralph Hasenhüttl!
Because: Wolfsburg is the Bundesliga club with the most first Bundesliga coach dismissals since 2012: VfL was responsible for the first Bundesliga coach dismissal three times: Felix Magath in 2012, Andries Jonker in 2017 and most recently Mark van Bommel in 2022.
VfB Stuttgart are in second place in the ranking for the “First Bundesliga coach sacked” with two first dismissals.
The 2015/16 season had a particular bang for the buck.
Lucien Favre resigned as coach of Borussia Mönchengladbach with immediate effect after five defeats in the first five games – even though he had led the “Foals” to third place and into the Champions League in the previous season. For comparison: Favre’s odds for the first coach dismissal at the time were around 70.0.
Favorites for the first coach sacking in 2024/25
In our experience, the coaches of promoted teams are the only constant in the sacking rankings: Year after year, they are among the top candidates for the first sacking.
But only in the rarest of cases have they actually made the first move. This is also because their recent successes in the Bundesliga 2 have given them a kind of leap of faith.
However, it remains to be seen how quickly this will evaporate. Traditionally, a lot depends on the start of the season.
That is why it can also happen that a coach is suddenly sacked, which was not necessarily expected before the start of the season. As a result, bookmakers with coach bets tend to see other coaches in trouble first.
Particularly those who are under contract with clubs that have high expectations – such as Dortmund, Frankfurt, Wolfsburg, Gladbach and Hoffenheim.
