Thomas Schneider (soccer player, 1972)

Thomas Schneider
Thomas Schneider, 2011
Personnel
birthday	November 24, 1972
place of birth	Rheinhausen ,  Germany
size	184 cm
position	Defender
Juniors
Years	station
1979-1983	TSV Höfingen
1983-1991	VfB Stuttgart
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1991-1994	VfB Stuttgart amateurs	43 (4)
1991-2003	VfB Stuttgart	133 (7)
2003-2005	Hannover 96	8 (0)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
2007-2009	FC Dingolfing U-19
2009-2010	FC Dingolfing
2011-2013	VfB Stuttgart U-17
2013-2014	VfB Stuttgart
2014-2018	Germany (assistant coach)
1 Only league games are given.

Thomas Schneider (born November 24, 1972 in Rheinhausen ) is a former German soccer player and active soccer coach . During his time as a player, Schneider was mostly in central defense since his youth for VfB Stuttgart , in whose first team he played for 12 years (1991 to 2003). He ended his career at Hannover 96 due to an injury in 2005 .

Active in the club's youth team since 2011, he was head coach of VfB Stuttgart from August 2013 to March 2014. From October 2014 to August 2018 he was assistant coach of the German national team under Joachim Löw .

Player career

Thomas Schneider was born in Duisburg-Rheinhausen. He started playing football in the youth department of TSV Höfingen . As a ten-year-old, he moved to VfB Stuttgart, where he played in all youth teams. With the A-Juniors of VfB, the defender won two German championships in 1990 and 1991 .

For the 1991/92 season Schneider was appointed to the VfB amateur team supervised by Jochen Rücker, which played in the then third-class Oberliga Baden-Württemberg . At the age of 18, Schneider made his Bundesliga debut when he was in the starting line-up in the 3-2 home win against Bayern Munich (October 19, 1991). In the further course of the 1991/92 season , Schneider came only one more time due to a serious back injury. At the end of the season, VfB Stuttgart celebrated their fourth championship title.

After Schneider had overcome his injury, he played again two seasons with the VfB amateurs. For the 1994/95 season he returned to the Bundesliga team. There he developed into a regular player. Schneider scored his first Bundesliga goal on March 18, 1995 when he made it 1-0 in the game against Eintracht Frankfurt.

Before the 1996/97 season , Peter Neururer wanted to lure Thomas Schneider as a libero to 1. FC Köln , but Schneider extended his expiring contract with VfB for another year. The season became one of the most successful at VfB Stuttgart in the 1990s. Shortly before the start of the season, Joachim Löw replaced coach Rolf Fringer , who became the national coach for Switzerland. Under the new coach, the Swabians were at the top of the table for most of the preliminary round. On the side of the “magic triangle” around Krassimir Balakow , Fredi Bobic and Giovane Élber , Schneider advanced to become a top performer as the right defender in Löw's three-man chain.

Due to strong ideas, Schneider was appointed by national coach Berti Vogts for the World Cup qualifier against Armenia on October 9, 1996. This was followed by nominations for the international matches against Northern Ireland (November 9, 1996) and against Ukraine (April 30, 1997).

Schneider celebrated one of his greatest successes with VfB at the end of the 1996/97 season when he won the DFB Cup in the final against Energie Cottbus (2-0)

In the following season, Stuttgart reached a European final for the second time in their history in the European Cup Winners' Cup after victories over ÍBV Vestmannaeyjar , Germinal Ekeren , Slavia Prague and Lokomotiv Moscow . There, VfB met Chelsea on May 13, 1998 in Stockholm's Råsundastadion . Schneider was in the starting line-up, but had to leave the field with cramps after 53 minutes. A few minutes later, the decisive goal was conceded to make it 1-0 for Chelsea.

Despite the successes under Löw, VfB President Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder signed Winfried Schäfer, who had been dismissed from Karlsruher SC , as the new coach for the 1998/99 season. As with his successors Wolfgang Rolff , Rainer Adrion and Ralf Rangnick, there was no success . The team settled in the lower half of the table in the next few years and was in acute danger of relegation in early 2001. Relegation was only ensured with the commitment of Felix Magath . While VfB Stuttgart subsequently stabilized again, a difficult time began for Schneider after he had to take a complete break due to an injury in the 2001/02 season and only made four appearances in the following season.

For the 2003/04 season , Schneider accepted an offer from Hannover 96 . Shortly after his move, Schneider received a blow on the ankle in a friendly against AS Roma . For more accurate blood tests because of a recognized too late, was tick bite transmitted disease diagnosed. In the following three years Schneider therefore had to be treated cyclically with antibiotics and was no longer able to fully exercise. In the summer of 2005 he had to end his career early due to this illness after 133 Bundesliga games for VfB Stuttgart and eight games for Hannover 96.

Coaching career

Beginnings in the amateur field

As a coach, Thomas Schneider gained his first experience with the U19 team of FC Dingolfing in the Bayern League. He worked with the team from 2007 to 2009 and almost achieved promotion to the A-Juniors Bundesliga. As a trainer, he promoted talents like Oliver Hein and Sebastian Nachreiner, who later played in the second Bundesliga at SSV Jahn Regensburg . During the 2008-09 season, Schneider was promoted to first-team coach. In his year and a half as coach of the Bayernliga team, the Dingolfinger finished seventh and sixth. During this time he interned at TSG Hoffenheim , VfB Stuttgart , Hannover 96 and Sporting Lisbon, among others .

From April 2010 he took part in the 57th coaching course of the German Football Association (DFB) at the Hennes-Weisweiler Academy in Cologne and acquired the UEFA Pro license. He completed the course, in which Michael Wiesinger , Markus Weinzierl , Markus Gisdol , Tayfun Korkut , Roger Schmidt and Sascha Lewandowski also took part, in March 2011 as the second best of his class with a grade of 1.3.

After acquiring his football instructor license, Schneider took over the U17 team at VfB Stuttgart for the 2011/12 season and led the team into the final of the 2012 German B-Junior Championship, which was lost 2-0 to Hertha BSC. In January 2013 Schneider extended his contract as a youth coach at VfB Stuttgart until 2017. At the end of the 2012/13 season his team became German B-Junior champions; VfB won the new edition of the previous year's final 1-0.

After separating from Bruno Labbadia on August 26, 2013, Schneider took over as the new head coach with his assistants Alfons Higl and Tomislav Marić, the Bundesliga team of VfB Stuttgart and received a contract dated until the end of June 2015. On March 9, 2014 he was given leave of absence after a series of negative events.

German national team

Since October 2014 Schneider has been the assistant coach of Joachim Löw, under whom he had already acted as a player at VfB Stuttgart, for the German national soccer team . In 2017 he won the FIFA Confederations Cup as an assistant coach . After leaving the preliminary round of the 2018 World Cup, national coach Löw did without Schneider as an assistant, who switched to the scouting department of the DFB.

titles and achievements

as a player with VfB Stuttgart

• German champion 1992
• German runner-up in 2003
• DFB Cup winner 1997
• Finalist in the 1998 European Cup Winners' Cup

as a trainer with VfB Stuttgart

• German B-Junior Champion 2013

Private

Thomas Schneider attended the Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium in Leonberg up to the 11th grade and graduated from the Korntal-Münchingen Gymnasium in Korntal near Stuttgart in 1992 . He is married and has a son. He lives with his family in Straubing, Lower Bavaria .

Web links

• Thomas Schneider in the database of fussballdaten.de
• Thomas Schneider in the database of weltfussball.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A special volume. VfB Stuttgart 1893 eV, February 16, 2012, accessed on August 26, 2013 . 
2. ^ Dingolfing, Straubing and VfB Stuttgart. FuPa.net, February 22, 2012, accessed August 26, 2013 . 
3. ↑ Certificates for 25 new soccer teachers (page 68). German Football Association, March 17, 2011, accessed on August 26, 2013 . 
4. ↑ sl: Thomas Schneider becomes assistant trainer. Gesellschaft für DFB-Online GmbH, September 2, 2014, accessed on September 2, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Löw: "We absolutely underestimated the Özil photos". In: www.sueddeutsche.de. August 29, 2018. Retrieved August 29, 2018 .