Holger Fach (born 6 September 1962) is a German football manager and former professional player. Mainly a

defensive midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundari ...

, he could also pitch in at

centre back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either ...

Club career

Between 1981 and 1998, Fach played 416

Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...

games for

Fortuna Düsseldorf Düsseldorfer Turn- und Sportverein Fortuna 1895 e.V., commonly known as Fortuna Düsseldorf (), is a German football club in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, which competes in the 2. Bundesliga. Founded in 1895, Fortuna entered the league ...

, Borussia Mönchengladbach,

Bayer Uerdingen KFC Uerdingen 05 is a German football club in the Uerdingen district of the city of Krefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia. The former Bundesliga side enjoyed its greatest successes in the 1980s but now plays in the fifth-level Oberliga. History The ...

, Bayer 04 Leverkusen and

TSV 1860 Munich , commonly known as TSV 1860 München (; lettered as ) or 1860 Munich, is a sports club based in Munich. The club's football team currently plays in the 3. Liga, the third tier of German football. 1860 Munich was one of the founding members o ...

. He scored 67 goals during this period, and won the

DFB-Pokal The DFB-Pokal ( is a German knockout football cup competition held annually by the German Football Association (DFB). Sixty-four teams participate in the competition, including all clubs from the Bundesliga and the 2. Bundesliga. It is considered ...

with Borussia in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

. In only half-a-season with Uerdingen in 1987–88, Fach scored a career-best nine league goals, greatly contributing to the side maintaining its top flight status. He retired with Fortuna Düsseldorf in the

second division In sport, the Second Division, also called Division 2 or Division II is usually the second highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Following the rise of Premier League style compet ...

in 1997–98.

International career

During a one-year span, Fach also gained five

caps Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Ja ...

for the

national team A national sports team (commonly known as a national team or a national side) is a team that represents a nation, rather than a particular club or region, in an international sport. The term is most commonly associated with team sports, for exa ...

, his debut coming on 31 August 1988, in a 1990 World Cup qualifier against

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

, in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

(he played the entire match in a 4–0 win). He also represented West Germany at the

1988 Summer Olympics The 1988 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad () and commonly known as Seoul 1988 ( ko, 서울 1988, Seoul Cheon gubaek palsip-pal), was an international multi-sport event held from 17 September to 2 October ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

, where he played a role in the side winning a Bronze medal scoring 2 goals in the process.

Coaching career

After retiring as a player, Fach was appointed to coach the amateur team at Borussia Mönchengladbach (he worked with the club as a scout the previous year) and after a short ''

intermezzo In music, an intermezzo (, , plural form: intermezzi), in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work. In music history, the term ha ...

'' at

Rot-Weiss Essen Rot-Weiss Essen is a German association football club based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club currently plays in the 3. Liga, at the Stadion an der Hafenstraße. The team won the DFB-Pokal in 1953, and the German championship in 195 ...

, on 21 September 2003 he became head coach for the former, leaving his post on October of the following year. On 5 June 2005, he became the new manager for

VfL Wolfsburg Verein für Leibesübungen Wolfsburg e. V., commonly known as VfL Wolfsburg () or Wolfsburg, is a German professional sports club based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. The club grew out of a multi-sports club for Volkswagen workers in the city of W ...

, but after a weak first half of the season was fired on 19 December, together with

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

Thomas Strunz Thomas Strunz (born 25 April 1968) is a German former professional footballer who played mostly as a defensive midfielder. Over the course of 12 seasons, he amassed Bundesliga totals of 235 games and 32 goals, representing in the competition Ba ...

. In January 2007, Fach took the reins of second division outfit

SC Paderborn 07 Sport-Club Paderborn 07 e.V., commonly known as simply SC Paderborn 07 () or SC Paderborn, is a German association football club based in Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club has enjoyed its greatest successes since the turn of the mille ...

(being fired midway through his second season). On 18 April 2008, he took over as manager of another second-tier side,

FC Augsburg Fußball-Club Augsburg 1907 e. V., commonly known as FC Augsburg () or Augsburg, is a German football club based in Augsburg, Bavaria. FC Augsburg play in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system. The team was founded as ...

. After a disappointing beginning to 2009, FC Augsburg club management passed a vote of confidence in Fach for the remainder of the season, however both sides also agreed to end their cooperation at season's end. On 13 April 2009, he was fired from

along with his assistant coach

Dariusz Pasieka Dariusz Pasieka (born 3 August 1965, in Chojnice) is a Polish professional football manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is ...

. After nine months without a job Fach was named on 25 January 2010 as the new head coach of the Kazakhstani vice-champion Lokomotiv Astana.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fach, Holger 1962 births Living people Sportspeople from Wuppertal German footballers Bundesliga players 2. Bundesliga players Fortuna Düsseldorf players Borussia Mönchengladbach players Bayer 04 Leverkusen players TSV 1860 Munich players KFC Uerdingen 05 players Germany international footballers Germany under-21 international footballers Olympic footballers of West Germany West German footballers Footballers at the 1988 Summer Olympics Olympic bronze medalists for West Germany German football managers Borussia Mönchengladbach managers VfL Wolfsburg managers FC Augsburg managers FC Astana managers Association football defenders Association football midfielders German expatriate football managers German expatriate sportspeople in Kazakhstan Bundesliga managers Olympic medalists in football Rot-Weiss Essen managers 2. Bundesliga managers SC Paderborn 07 managers Medalists at the 1988 Summer Olympics Footballers from North Rhine-Westphalia