Berlin (AFP)

Marco Rose, the rising star among German coaches, will be next season on the bench of Borussia Dortmund, who hopes with him to finally come out of the slump that has plagued the club for more than three seasons.

Successful coach of Mönchengladbach since 2019, Marco Rose will take over from Edin Terzic at 44, who was bombed in December as head coach after the dismissal of Swiss Lucien Favre, of whom he was deputy.

"Marco Rose will be our head coach from the 2021-2022 season," Dortmund said on its website.

"He made a commitment in this direction with the persons in charge of the BVB".

His mission will be to return to Dortmund the conquering spirit that the club seems to have lost since the departure of Thomas Tuchel in 2017. Since then, four coaches have followed one another on the bench and two of them (Peter Bosz and Lucien Favre) have been sacked before Christmas for poor results.

Terzic is already in the hot seat two months after his arrival.

Two days before the first leg of the Champions League against Sevilla on Wednesday, the Ruhr club was surprised and upset by the public announcement of this transfer, first by the press, then directly by Mönchengladbach.

"The BVB is fully focused on the current season and on the pursuit of its sporting goals," the Dortmund statement insisted.

"Out of respect for all stakeholders, Borussia Dortmund will not speak (on the subject) until the end of the current season."

- Double Austrian champion -

"Marco Rose has decided that he wants to use a clause in his contract, which runs until 2022, and join Borussia Dortmund this summer," Mönchengladbach sporting director Max Eberl tweeted.

Borussia Dortmund are going through a very bad patch: they have won only one of their last six Bundesliga games, and are completely stalled in the title race, in sixth position with 15 points behind Bayern Munich.

The leaders fear that Terzic will not be able to bring the team back to the top four, qualifying for the lucrative Champions League.

Financially weighed down by the Covid-19 crisis, Borussia is playing its medium-term future on this qualification.

Marco Rose, who arrived in Mönchengladbach at the start of last season, had done most of his training as a coach in Austria, in Salzburg, first with the youth teams and then with the first team.

His record is already rich with two Austrian championship titles (2018-2019) and one cup (2019).

Last year, for his first season at Mönchengladbach, he lifted the team to fourth place in the Bundesliga, and landed a ticket for C1.

Qualified this fall in a group where Real Madrid and Inter Milan were, however, "Gladbach" must face in the round of 16 the English ogre Manchester City.

The first leg is scheduled for February 24 in Budapest, Germany having banned the English team from entering its territory, under current health rules.

© 2021 AFP