Bayern stalwart Thorsten Fink, recently forced to end his playing career with a knee injury, is to join the coaching staff at Austrian league leaders Red Bull Salzburg.
The 38-year-old will initially take charge of the Salzburg reserves, with the goal of leading them to promotion from the Austrian third division. "I reckon the vision for the future at Red Bull Salzburg will be a very interesting challenge, so I was delighted to accept the offer," the former player commented.
Old boys' reunion
The former midfield enforcer will meet up with a number of ex-team-mates in Salzburg. The senior side is coached jointly by Giovanni Trapattoni and Lothar Matthäus, while the team is currently built around Thomas Linke, Alexander Zickler and Niko Kovac. Furthermore, Fink knows Marcus Steinhöfer very well from his spell as the permitted over-age captain of the Bayern reserves.
Fink spent nine seasons as a professional with Bayern, winning the German championship four times and the DFB Cup on three occasions. The highlight of his senior career, which began with Wattenscheid in 1989 and continued in Karlsruhe before the switch to Bavaria in 1997, was the Munich giants' 2001 Champions League triumph.
Coaching qualifications
Fink switched to the reserve squad as captain for the 2003-4 season, responsible for implementing coach Hermann Gerland's tactical decisions on the pitch and helping to bring on the club's most promising youngsters. He successfully secured the highest European coaching qualification in December last year after a spell at the German Sports Academy in Cologne.
"I've always known I would make a good coach, so I've always wanted to get my badges," the veteran said at the time. The Salzburg job represents his first foray into a coaching hot seat. "It's exactly the platform I've been looking for," he observed.
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