May 18 is already a historic date in Frankfurt, but there is another perhaps more significant one for Oliver Glasner, the coach who placed the second umbrella stand in the Eintracht showcases. This is August 4, 2011, the day on which surgeons at a clinic in Copenhagen saved the life of the former SV Ried player. The Austrian felt pain heading in the session prior to the former UEFA play-off match against Danish side Brøndby and was ultimately diagnosed with a blood clot in the brain that prompted an emergency operation that saved his life.
Glasner himself even admitted that these headers may have saved his life, since without them the bleeding would not have been detected in time. It marked the end of the career for the 36-year-old player who, following the advice of his wife Bettina, won the coaching title and He ended up staying at Red Bull Salzburg, where he acted as Roger Schmidt’s second (Benfica’s new coach) and soaked up the philosophy of the clubs run by the energy drink giant. To this day, their teams bear the Red Bull seal.
After passing through the Ried and LASK benches, Glasner made the leap to a Bundesliga in which he made Wolfsburg a Champions League team in his second season as coach of the Verdiblancos. In spite of this, the always slow and polite coach opted to give way to an Eintracht team who were seduced by his proposal based on pressure after loss, direct play and quick transitions. After a difficult start to the season (Eintracht was eliminated from the Pokal against a third party), Glasner laid the foundation for a project that returned the eagles to the top of the continent 42 years later.
Even the technician himself couldn’t believe it. “Incredible,” he said after being crowned in Seville. “13 games in Europe and we haven’t lost any. I don’t know what to say. We always come back. It was an incredibly intense experience. Everyone squeezed everything one more time. Now we will celebrate it for a few days”. The title and, also, the pass to Champions. This time it is not lost by that former libero whose life was saved by headers.