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It is not always understandable for outsiders when football clubs part with their coach.
In the case of Sportfreunde Lotte, anyway.
There were ten in the past four years alone.
After Imke Wübbenhorst ended, number eleven will take over before the turn of the year.
The sports fans from the Autobahnkreuz are a club that makes the hearts of many football romantics beat faster.
The old manor style is still used here, football is discussed at the regulars table with arms rolled up.
Gut feeling instead of data analysis, beer instead of Power Point.
Anyone who likes football patron Werner Kampmann, played by Diether Krebs in the comedy "Bang Boom Bang", has to love Lotte.
There Kampmann has been successfully interpreted by Manfred Wilke for more than 30 years.
Entertaining real satire, which was even performed in the third division from 2016 to 2019.
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That is exactly where they wanted to go again in Lotte.
It should be places one to five.
After unsuccessful years, the recently less and less successful club formulated an optimistic goal.
To achieve this, the table would currently have to be rotated.
Lotte is table-19.
Relegation threatens.
Wübbenhorst had no chance
For many, guilt is now - a reflex to be expected, unfortunately - the woman.
The trainer who managed to run down sports fans from title candidate to relegated number one within a few weeks.
However, this is not only blanket, it is simply wrong.
Weeks after the club's full-bodied announcement, the few established players were gone instead of new ones.
Because there was no money.
Corona tore holes, and Wilke's wallet is apparently no longer as loose as it used to be.
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Imke Wübbenhorst, only the second fourth division coach in the history of German football, must have known after a few weeks which suicide mission she had taken over.
In the face of false promises and promises that were not kept, many coaches would have run away again straight away.
In retrospect, that might have been the better consequence for herself.
But the meticulous 32-year-old stayed and bit into her task with defiance and creativity.
Because she obviously did not recognize a choice for herself.
Which brings us to the real problem.
Disappointed and frustrated, but loyal: Imke Wübbenhorst did not complain in Lotte
Source: pa / photo booth / van der Velden
Wübbenhorst had waited a long time to even get a chance in performance-related men's football.
The rejections piled up, even in league five they did not want them, committed advisors came across their mediation skills.
The tenor: good analysis, good presentation, but a woman?
No thanks.
When she no longer believed in it herself, the opportunity arose with the self-appointed aspirant for promotion.
Lotte was her only option.
And with it possibly her last.
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So she accepted the fact that she had to include players from the district league A youth team in the squad in order to be able to carry out a quantitatively adequate training operation at all.
She accepted a salary that was more like an expense allowance in the upper amateur sector and bit her tongue when the club did not make the announced new signings after all, cut the budget massively and signed 19 players, few of whom were the format for the fourth-highest division have.
Training preparation in Lotte: Imke Wübbenhorst worked eight months for Sportfreunde
Source: pa / dpa / Guido Kirchner
While the promised company car has not yet arrived, she drove her squad of young players and those who had been sorted out to the away games at the wheel of the team van.
She even made it to a non-relegation place in between.
The East Frisian had no chance - and still used it.
13 points after 18 games are more than some had feared for this team made up of underdogs.
And if you ask around in the league, you will learn a lot about the appreciation and respect that Wübbenhorst has earned from colleagues.
No quota should be requested at this point.
It's not about the fact that one or two women have to train men's teams in German professional football.
But it is very possible that a proven specialist and passionate football teacher was denied this job precisely because she is a woman.
It is also part of equality between trainer and trainer to receive the passport early.
But also to jump straight back onto the carousel if the quality is right.
Gender can no longer be a hiring criterion.