When a manager leaves one club to join another, it sends a ripple effect through the world of football. And when Schalke hired Markus Weinzierl, that ripple went all the way from the Bundesliga down to the amateur ranks of the German game, resulting in a conciliatory shipment of beer.
PA Sport explains:
Schalke drafted in Weinzierl from Augsburg, who in turn took Dirk Schuster from Darmstadt.
Norbert Meier took Schuster’s place, leaving Arminia Bielefeld needing a new coach, who became Rudiger Rehm of Sonnenhof Grossaspach.
They appointed SV Eichede’s Oliver Zapel, who then lured Jorn Grosskopf from Wedeler TSV, leaving them without a coach just a few weeks after they had appointed Grosskopf, albeit with a clause in his contract permitting him to leave for a higher-ranked club.
Wedeler’s director of sport told Frankfurter Allgemeine that he emailed his Schalke counterpart asking to either be sent 50 cases of beer or have a friendly arranged between the two clubs as “compensation” for setting off this chain of events. According to the newspaper, Wedeler got the beer.
Hopefully this is the start of all compensation and transfer fees being paid in crates of beer. It would certainly lessen the pain of losing a top player or manager for any club’s supporters.
Wonder what beer it was