Felix Magath on the Nati defender "... then Rodriguez would have won the Champions League"
Ricardo Rodriguez (31) still plays a leading role in the Swiss national team. How his former coach Felix Magath shaped him.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Felix Magath brought Ricardo Rodriguez from FC Zurich as a 19-year-old. "I wanted to make him a Champions League winner," he says.
- "The training sessions were tough, but I got through them," says Rodriguez himself about his time with Magath.
- Stéphane Henchoz tells how he was woken up at six o'clock on Saturday mornings for the tough training sessions.
When Ricardo Rodriguez (31) sits at the national team's press conference on Friday ahead of the match against Germany, his first coach in Germany is immediately the topic of conversation: Felix Magath (70). He brought him to Wolfsburg in 2012.
"They were very strenuous training sessions. But to be honest, they were good for me," says Rodriguez with a laugh. Stéphane Henchoz, who played under Magath at Hamburger SV in the nineties, had a similar experience.
He recounts: "At 6 o'clock in the morning, the masseur called us players in our hotel room and said: "It's getting looooong again." We had to go jogging at 6.15 am." Henchoz continued: "We also had to throw medicine balls to each other from a standing position. You can do that once or twice. But if you do that ten times ..."
When Magath later wanted to poach Henchoz from Liverpool as Stuttgart coach, Henchoz said: "Yes, I can imagine it. But I don't want to train as hard as I did at Hamburg." Magath says that, as an experienced professional, this is no longer necessary - but a transfer did not work out in the end.
Magath on Henchoz: "He was a quiet guy, rather shy and never really stood out. Except on the pitch. He wasn't so nice then and could also get in the way when necessary. He was a great player, I had imagined that he would become a world-class player." Henchoz later played for Liverpool for seven years.
Rodriguez on Magath: "Learned a lot from him"
Magath said he enjoyed working with young players: "Stéphane was young and I brought Ricardo over from FC Zurich when he was 19. I liked him for what he was. His left flank was exceptional and I imagined him marching up and down the left flank like Andy Robertson with the Scots today. That's how I wanted to develop him so that he could maybe win the Champions League one day. Unfortunately, I had to let him go too soon, unfortunately his development ended too soon ... But he did very, very well in Italy and with the national team."
Rodriguez also speaks only positively of Magath: "I learned a lot from him and am very grateful to him for bringing me to Wolfsburg. I really like him for that, it was good with him. The training sessions weren't very easy, but I got through them well."
