Thomas Reis is still the hero of VfL Bochum in the summer. He leads the club into the Bundesliga and manages to stay up in the league. But then he moves to FC Schalke 04 with a lot of noise. Discussions become public, he persona non grata. A few weeks later, he is now settling accounts with his ex-employer.
Bundesliga coach Thomas Reis is upset about the circumstances surrounding his departure from VfL Bochum. “There are people at VfL who I don’t want anything to do with anymore,” said the head coach of FC Schalke 04 of “Sport Bild”. “Because they didn’t stick to their agreements and in the end I was the only one who was pilloried. I learned my lessons from that.”
VfL Bochum parted ways with Reis in September after six defeats at the start of the season. At that time the club was last in the Bundesliga. VfL has now overtaken his new club Schalke with Reis’ successor Thomas Letsch, but is still in a relegation zone in 17th place.
Schalke had already been interested in rice in the summer. Reis publicly denied this fact at the time – which he would not do again in retrospect. “That was a mistake, I’ll say that very clearly today. I don’t mean the talks with Schalke, which Bochum was privy to at all times – even though I didn’t have a long-term contract at the time,” said Reis. “Unfortunately, I then made this one statement, which promptly fell on my feet. In consultation with VfL, I only wanted to protect all sides – but was not protected myself. A bitter experience.”
Thomas Reis and VfL Bochum were once very close. The coach got the club out of the “shit”, as striker Simon Zoller once said, led him to promotion and eventually even to stay up. The fans celebrated their coach, he celebrated with his team. The hopes in Bochum were high to have landed a similar coaching coup as SC Freiburg did with Christian Streich. But the dream quickly burst – and has since turned into a nightmare. The fact that his own ex-club has overtaken him in the table should make it twice as difficult for Reis.