With the Bundesliga sack race seemingly over for the current season, the trainer merry go round will not start up again until the post-season, but already reports are linking an old face with a return to the top German league. Dino Toppmöller, sacked as Julian Nagelsmann’s assistant when Bayern sacked their coach, is being widely tipped to succeed Oliver Glasner at Eintracht Frankfurt at the end of the season.
With Bayer Leverkusen looking to reach the Europa League final this season, memories of their last European final in 2012 are surfacing when Klaus Toppmöller led them to the Champions League final against Real Madrid. Now his son Dino is set to become the latest family member to take a Bundesliga coaching job.
After a playing career spent mostly in the 2.Bundesliga with Erzgebirge Aue, Jahn Regensburg. He ended his playing days in Luxembourg, he entered coaching whilst still playing for SV Mehring and Hamm Benfica. It was however with F91 Dudelange where he made a name for himself with three successive league titles and led the minnows to the group stage of the Europa League for the first time in the club’s history in 2018-19.
A move to Belgium with Virton was short-lived as Julian Nagelsmann wanted him to join him at RB Leipzig as his assistant and when Nagelsmann made the move to Bayern, Toppmöller (named after Dino Zoff) followed and became the number two at the Allianz Arena.
He has had the chance to audition for a top job when twice deputising for Nagelsmann when he was ill- once in the Champions League versus Benfica and against Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga. When asked previously about moving up from assistant to being the main man somewhere, he revealed, “of course it is my desire and ambition to be a head coach once again one day, but right now I’m really happy in my current role with Bayern Munich and there is absolutely no reason for me to want to change anything.”
That reason to change came when Bayern took the decision to sack Julian Nagelsmann and replace him with Thomas Tuchel. Toppmöller would no doubt be Nagelsmann’s first-choice as assistant in his next job (wherever that might be), but it seems that his right-hand man has admirers at the Deutsche Bank Park and with Oliver Glasner predicted to be leaving the club after the DFB Pokal final, Toppmöller is a leading candidate to take the helm with the Adler.
He was linked with the vacant VfB Stuttgart post earlier in the season, but the Swabians employed Bruno Labbadia instead. The son could be following in his father’s footsteps with Klaus having also previously been Eintracht Frankfurt’s coach in the 1993-94 season.
