Did you know that the new manager of Brighton, Fabian Hurzeler is only 31 years old? James Milner, Danny Welbeck, and Lewis Dunk are all older than him! The Texan born manager holds three citizenships (US, Swiss, and German) and was appointed as the youngest permanent manager in Premier League history going into the 2024/25 season. Why would such a young, seemingly inexperienced manager be appointed in the most challenging, competitive, and demanding league in the world?
On the 15 June 2024 Brighton and Hove Albion announced that Fabian Hurzeler would become their new head coach succeeding the Italian Roberto De Zerbi. Brighton and Hove Albion had finished the 2022/23 season finishing sixth and qualifying for the UEFA Europa League playing attacking exciting football under De Zerbi.
Going into the 2023/24 season there was high ambitions for Brighton to push on in the league and have a successful Europa league campaign. They started the season excellently winning five out of seven games. However, injuries piled up and with the squad rotation demands of the Europa League form dropped off. Nevertheless, Brighton topped their Europa League group, avoiding the qualification play off. The Europa League draw led to Brighton drawing a strong side in AS Roma. Brighton lost 4-0 in the first leg killing all hope of progressing to the next round.
Brighton had an injury riddled squad, and the football had become quite stale with teams able to combat De Zerbi’s press-baiting football. Brighton only won two out of their last ten Premier League games killing all hope of requalifying for Europe and finishing in an underwhelming eleventh place. Brighton’s owner and De Zerbi had a disagreement over the Italians involvement in recruitment. This led to a mutual decision for De Zerbi to leave and join Marseille and Brighton turned to appoint Fabian Hurzeler.
Fabian Hurzeler was born in Houston, Texas, to a Swiss father and a German mother. His family moved back to Freiburg, Germany when he was two years old, and then three years later to Munich where he grew up. Hurzeler joined the Bayern Munich academy aged eleven and progressed through the club’s youth teams and the German national youth teams. At Bayern Munich, he played alongside ex Liverpool star Emre Can who predicted he would: ‘have a great career as a coach.’
Hurzeler played as a defensive midfielder and spent his career at the reserve teams at Bayern Munich, Hoffenheim and 1860 Munich making a combined 110 appearances. However, at 24 he in 2016 he dropped down to the fifth tier to become a player-coach at FC Pipinsried and in 2018 he took the role of Germany U20s assistant coach alongside his role at Pipinsried.
In 2020 he became assistant coach at second division FC St Pauli and after just over a year, was appointed head coach. St Pauli sat 15th in the table three places and just one point off being bottom of the league, Hurzeler worked the players hard over the World Cup winter break implementing his high pressing and possession based attacking football. Hurzeler won all ten of his first ten games setting a new Bundesliga 2 record, leaving the relegation zone and only six points off a promotion place. St Pauli had the best second half of the season record with thirteen wins, two draws and only two defeats, finishing the season in fifth place. In the 2023/24 season the excellent performances continued, and St Pauli sat 2nd in the league table in December unbeaten winning eight and drawing nine. On the final day of the season FC St Pauli won the league.
Hurzeler is a remarkably interesting manager from a tactical point of view. He sets up an out of possession team that presses high up the pitch with an extremely high line similar to Postecoglou’s Spurs. Hurzeler likes to deploy hard working, physical players in his system to physically dominate opponents and stop them developing control in games. FC St Pauli were the highest ranked team for high-intensity runs (25,378) in the division, demonstrating the high pressing nature of his teams.
Hurzeler sets up a possession-based team when in possession focusing on controlling the game and prioritising width using direct wingers. He often used a tactic that looked crazy where the holding midfielder would drop in between the centre backs and the two more advanced midfielders would push up next to the striker creating a hole in the midfield which would discombobulate man-marking systems and create space which the full-backs would move into creating a 2-1-2-5 system.
St Pauli’s control of possession last season is represented by two of their centre backs ranking 1st and 4th for touches. The directness of the wingers is represented by their ball carrying stats. With 88 dribbles attempted, Oladapo Afolayan ranked third in the league and Elias Saad (76) ranked fourth. The control of possession and use of width was effective as Hurzeler’s team registered 533 attempts on goal: the most in the league.
The final component of Hurzeler’s tactical approach is his emphasis on set pieces, based on experience managing in the lower tiers of Germany he realised the importance of them. Hurzeler’s use of physical players meant that he had lots of threat in his team from corners and free kicks and meant they excelled defending set pieces. St Pauli scored 15 times from dead-ball situations, and only conceded 8 times.
The question is will Fabian Hurzeler be able to manage effectively in the Premier League? Criticisms have been made over his age questioning his experience. The more knowledgeable have questioned whether his seven years of experience in the German lower leagues translates to the top league in the world.
In my opinion, yes, he will definitely be able to manage at such a high level. Brighton’s owner Tony Bloom has full backed Hurzeler stating, ‘Fabian is the best fit for the football club’ and spending over 200M to bring in nine new players for Hurzeler’s system. Key additions include physical and composed midfielder Mats Wieffer, attacking minded and physical full back Ferdi Kadioglu and direct winger Yankubah Minteh. Hurzeler has also made slight tweaks to his system to adjust to his players and the Premier League, switching to a back four and inverting one full back rather than two.
Hurzeler had a magnificent start to the season beating Everton and Manchester United and getting a point at Arsenal. It left Brighton on seven points heading into the international break and Hurzeler received a well-deserved Premier League Manager of the Month award. With such a young talented squad and manager as well as experienced professionals, Brighton have an exceptionally good balance. The question is where do you think Hurzeler can push Brighton to finish this season?
