Newcastle manager Matthias Jaissle has revealed he had a neck tumour when he was five years old and how his route to coaching was borne out of injury anguish.
When he was at his lowest, a training programme in Leipzig helped him ‘have joy back in life’ after battling through a playing career that he cut short at just 25.
Following managerial spells with RB Salzburg and Al-Ahli, the 38-year-old was appointed Newcastle boss this summer and his side are ninth in the Premier League.
A former defender, Jaissle was a youth player at Stuttgart and spent his senior career with Hoffenheim, where he achieved back-to-back promotions.
However, he suffered injury setbacks throughout his time as a player and described the impact some of these had from a young age.
Jaissle said: ‘I had more moments actually. I had a tumour when I was five years old in the neck so I couldn’t move my neck anymore. That was already a period when I learned a lot.
Newcastle boss Matthias Jaissle, pictured during his playing days for Hoffenheim in 2007, retired at 25 and moved into coaching
‘I was five years old, but I learned a lot about life already – how important it is to be healthy and how grateful you can be also to be healthy and to follow your dream. It was not clear that I can play football as a young kid anymore.
‘That was one part. I was unfortunately really unlucky with injuries.
‘Already in the youth I had a year almost not playing. That gave me at 16, I will say the discipline in life to really fight. In that age where usually you go out, you party or you quit even already. So I had that period.
‘When I made a debut in the first season in the first team, the first league, after seven, eight months playing regularly for Hoffenheim I ruptured my ACL, the cartilage, everything was done. I felt it could be difficult to carry on playing on the highest level. I was about 20…’
‘It was tough. I had just become a Germany Under-21 player. I was about to be called into the national team for the first time. That was the next step. We would have played in the Under-21 Euros that summer and I ruptured my Anterior Cruciate Ligament in March. It was a tough moment.
‘I was really down. I listened to the stories saying I could be back in four months and I fully believed. After four months I was still in a wheelchair.’
Jaissle was forced to retire aged 25 and the next steps were unclear until he began studying sport-related courses through an online university.
A training opportunity in Leipzig then arose through Ralf Rangnick, Jaissle’s former boss at Hoffenheim, and he subsequently discovered a taste for coaching in their youth set-up.
Jaissle has opened up about his childhood and the illnesses and injuries that shaped him
He said: ‘I got the chance through Ralf Rangnick – sometimes I mention him as a mentor – I got the chance doing some of a training programme in Leipzig.
‘I wanted to transfer the things I learned in my studies on the pitch or the offices, it was actually planned to make every six weeks another department.
‘I started as an assistant coach under Sebastian Hoeness, current coach of Stuttgart, and then I became first assistant coach as a trainee. I knew him because we played together at Hoffenheim.
‘Then afterwards I should have gone to the sport director, the administrative department and so on. A normal training programme circling around, commercial, marketing.
‘I had so much fun in the first six weeks being an assistant coach and Sebastian told me it would be nice to stay actually so I didn’t move on.
Jaissle is pictured during an TV interview in 2009 before his switch to management
‘I felt not even after six weeks, I felt after two weeks ‘wow, I have joy back in life, not only studying and reading, I have a new purpose’. It was really nice to see.
‘I continued with him two years, finished my studying, my education stuff, my licences. Then I moved on to Brondby, the first time as an assistant with the first team. It was a nice step.
‘Then you know all the other steps, to Salzburg in the youth as head coach.’
