Ahead of the resumption of their season after the winter break, Red Bull Salzburg’s head coach Huub Stevens has pledged yet more of his future to the club.
Stevens, 56, has often repeated his desire to stay in Austria, most recently when, last month, he was linked with the vacant coach’s role at German Bundesliga champions Wolfsburg. The good news for Red Bulls fans is that, not only is Huub staying, but he's now staying even longer, having agreed a contract extension that takes his tenure through to at least 2012.
“I have always stressed that I feel very content in Salzburg, professionally and privately,” said Stevens in a television interview. “Red Bull Salzburg are currently in an exciting, intriguing and promising phase. It’s exactly at this stage that I would like to put more into the club accordingly.”
The ‘exciting, intriguing and promising phase’ of which the coach speaks is the club’s unprecedented run in European competition in which they dominated qualifying in Group G of this season's Europa League with a 100 per cent record from six games, unmatched by any of the other 47 teams in the group stage.
'I have always stressed that I feel very content in Salzburg' – Huub Stevens
The biggest game of Salzburg’s recent history takes place next week, when they take on Standard Liège of Belgium in the first leg of their last-32 knockout tie.
Securing the continuity of the Salzburg coaching staff, which includes the contract extensions of Stevens’s right-hand men Eddy Achterberg and Ton Lokhoff, is crucial to the club’s development, believes Red Bull’s global soccer chief Dietmar Beiersdorfer.
“We are convinced of the quality of our coach and see continuity in the managerial position as an important building block for the further development of Red Bull Salzburg,” comments Beiersdorfer.
The club have a cup game against Sturm Graz tomorrow and a league match versus SV Ried at the weekend, where they will hope to make up the two-point deficit to Austrian Bundesliga leaders Rapid Vienna, before they head to the Low Countries for the Europa League match on February 18.
Keep up with all the news on the side’s preparations at at redbulls.com
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