Withered in Zurich, blossomed in Mainz

FSV Mainz 05 has been in the Bundesliga since 2009. And fights against relegation. Before the football game against 1. FC Köln last Sunday, queues formed in front of stalls at the stadium. There are neither tickets nor potions for sale there, but stacks of red T-shirts with the words “Never give up” written on them in white letters. “10 euros each,” says the saleswoman.

Three hours later, the turbulent match against Cologne (1:1) is over and the stadium is empty. Mainz coach Bo Henriksen stands in front of the locker room after the interview course. Before, he suffered, screamed and repeatedly grabbed his long hair. Once he even sank to his knees on the sidelines out of sheer excitement. He lives the emotional closeness to the players and cannot refrain from expressing his opinion to the referee on the pitch afterwards.

Henriksen soaks up the atmosphere in the packed arena with 33,000 spectators. He now works in a league where the speakers heat up the mood before games (“You are the best fans in the world”). A matter of taste. The Bundesliga game is over, Mainz and their coach have to digest a small setback in their race to catch up.

FC Zurich is very far away for Henriksen

Henriksen seems exhausted and is asked how far away Zurich is for him at that moment. So it’s not the geographical distance, but his feeling towards FC Zurich, from which he became estranged and left in February. “I follow the club and know that they didn’t play this weekend,” he said, “what else can I say?” A pat on the shoulder of the person you are talking to and the trainer is gone.

He thawed out again when, as he left the stadium, he made himself available to numerous fans for autographs and selfies amid shouts of “Bo, Bo.” An approachable person of the people.

Such scenes show how popular Bo Henriksen is in Mainz, at least in these days, which are characterized by emotions and slogans of perseverance in the struggle to stay in the league. Whoever you talk to in Mainz: people praise the cheerful Dane, his “energy and positivity,” as Martin Schmidt says. The Valais native is the sports director in Mainz and wears jeans and a red T-shirt (“Never give up”) under a leather jacket. He looks like a rock star with his long hair and mountain guide face.

Schmidt is the contrast to sports director Christian Heidel, who does not wear a red T-shirt, concentrates power in the background and, as the discoverer of coaches Klopp and Tuchel, enjoys undue respect and freedom of action in this city. In contrast to Heidel, Schmidt approaches the media offensively after the match and repeats the sentence: “Mainz fits Henriksen, and Henriksen fits Mainz.”

The Dane is the impulse from outside

In the moment we can agree with this without reservation, the statistics speak for themselves: the Dane has stabilized the previously stumbling team in ten games and led them from an almost hopeless situation almost at the bottom of the table to a position from which they can see land again. Schmidt says that the blocked team needed “impulses and freshness from outside”. Henriksen delivers exactly what he promises with his cheerful manner.

Perhaps he will even keep Mainz in the Bundesliga, a relatively small club in top German football, which, with its annual revenue of 115 million euros, narrowly leaves SC Freiburg and Werder Bremen and, more clearly, the clubs from Augsburg, Bochum, Heidenheim and Darmstadt behind.

Mainz is a survivor and is known for its coaches being promoted internally to managerial positions. That was the case with Jürgen Klopp, with Thomas Tuchel, with Martin Schmidt, with Sandro Schwarz and most recently with Henriksen’s predecessors Bo Svensson and Jan Siewert. After two successful years, the team with Svensson went astray, whereupon the Dane said goodbye with tears and the words “Once Mainz, always Mainz”. With Siewert, Mainz continued to spiral downwards – so Bo Henriksen had to put in his good mood. For once, no one from their own house.

Not all trainers burn out quickly

He used to work for Horsens in Denmark for six years and led Midtjylland to second place in the table in one season before he was released and, from autumn 2022, stabilized FC Zurich, which was in dire straits at the time, and led it away from the bottom of the table. Henriksen accompany question marks. Can his actions in top-level football last in one place? Doesn’t the pick-me-up with the casual sayings threaten to burn out emotionally too quickly? Schmidt counters the question marks with a kind of exclamation mark because of his role: “There are coaches who don’t burn out quickly.”

The nature of Bo Henriksen includes the “Bo-slang”. Mainly in English, in Mainz sometimes also in German. When he was introduced in Mainz, he called himself an “old bastard”. Before the match against Cologne, he heated up the mood like a warlord by demanding that his players go onto the field “like an army”. He has also said that footballers should “die for each other” on the pitch.

In this terminology, a football game obviously becomes a “battle”. In Zurich, at a media conference before a Super League game, Henriksen was once tempted to the following escalation: a “fight” became a “battle” and in the end even a “was”. All of this happened in the presence of a group of young people who were allowed to follow the proceedings of a media conference.

Henriksen unabashedly uses “cabin language”

That’s Bo. That leaves Bo. The only question is why he doesn’t put a stop to the inappropriate and unnecessary war rhetoric. And why superiors don’t intervene. Schmidt speaks of “cabin language”. He also used strong words at the time, “but perhaps they didn’t understand the Valais dialect here.” Bo is Bo. Authenticity, in the cabin – and outside. Incitement. Take away fear, build strength. Never give up.

“We have to be careful not to take away his strengths,” says Schmidt.

At the media conference after the Cologne game, Henriksen behaved professionally as he did not address the referee polemic that some media representatives wanted to start. Cologne coach Timo Schultz also says: “A lot of things are a matter of discretion. You won’t hear any referee scolding from me.” Schultz coached FC Basel at the start of the season, was released at the end of September 2023 and took over the declining Cologne team at the beginning of 2024.

Henriksen was at FC Zurich, which got off to a successful start this season but became more and more unhinged due to inflationary personnel changes. In February he fled from the Zurich trouble spot to Mainz. This is how the two coaches see each other again. Fight against relegation in the Bundesliga instead of the Super League. The Henriksen effect is much more noticeable and measurable than that in Cologne, where Schultz only slightly increased the points average of his predecessor Steffen Baumgart.

In any case, Henriksen is closer to staying in the league than Schultz. Longer-term objectives must take a back seat. Once Mainz, always Mainz? It fits quite well in these all-or-nothing times. Henriksen is widely accepted in Mainz. Things were different in Zurich this season. Creeping alienation. No stone is left unturned in the organization; his two successors, Murat Ural and Umberto Romano, have recently been said goodbye.

It can happen quickly. Bo Henriksen knows this.