Daniel Thioune, the head coach of Fortuna Düsseldorf, is still struggling with the missed promotion to the Bundesliga in the previous season.
“I’ve never watched the game again” he told “Kicker”. It would have “ripped open that scar again, and I didn’t want that.” He couldn’t change the result, but he could learn from it. “Of course, the question remains, what the players, what I could have done better, whether I always made the right decisions with my starting eleven or in my substitutions, but everyone came from a complete conviction.”
The 27th of May “destroyed a lot for us” according to Thioune. “But we could also take a lot from it, for example, this resilience.” They had “sorted themselves out very well and taken something with them” afterwards.
As for his own future, the football coach doesn’t see an exit from Fortuna despite the exit clause. “I once said that the biggest thing is to play at 3:30 pm, but I won’t do that at any price” he said. “It’s cool here in Düsseldorf, I have a hankering for it.” He finds it charming to “be able to develop with Fortuna, to grow healthily, and to work sustainably.”
Düsseldorf had won the first leg in the relegation in May 2024 in Bochum with 3:0, but then collapsed in the return leg and narrowly missed promotion in the penalty shootout.