Edin Terzic: 5 things on Borussia Dortmunds DFB Cup-winning coach
At the age of just 38, Edin Terzic has led Borussia Dortmund to only their fifth DFB Cup title ever having succeeded head coach Lucien Favre before the arrival of Marco Rose at the start of 2021/22.
bundesliga.com has all you need to know about the born and raised Dortmund fan who led his club to Cup glory over RB Leipzig at the Olympiastadion...
1) He's a student of the game
Born in 1982 to parents who had emigrated from Yugoslavia, Terzic was raised in the town of Menden - about 30 minutes' drive from the home of five-time Bundesliga champions Dortmund. A forward in his youth, he played as a semi-pro in the regional leagues to help pay for his sports science studies at Ruhr University in Bochum. It was while on that course that he met both his wife Kora as well as current Germany U18 head coach Hannes Wolf.
Soon both men would end up working at Dortmund, with Terzic rewarded for concentrating on learning the ins and outs of coaching from a relatively young age.
"I studied for my UEFA A Licence and met the chief scout of Borussia Dortmund, and a couple of months later he called me and offered me a job," the new Dortmund head coach once told the West Ham website. "In 2010, I stopped playing and started to be a coach with Borussia Dortmund."
2) He worked under Jürgen Klopp
Dortmund fans won't need reminding that 2010 was a pretty good time to be around the club. Current Liverpool boss Jürgen Klopp had arrived at the 1997 European champions two years earlier, and he slowly began building a squad capable of challenging for top honours.
Terzic, meanwhile, began combining his role as a scout with helping out his old pal Wolf - who would go on to become head coach of Hamburg and Stuttgart - as assistant coach of BVB's U17, U19, and U23 teams.
While he was learning his trade and identifying players who could improve the first team, Terzic also got to see how Klopp's side - with Mario Götze, Mats Hummels, and Robert Lewandowski to the fore - took Germany and Europe by storm. Dortmund won back-to-back league titles between 2010 and 2012 - as well as the DFB Cup in 2012 - before losing 2-1 to Bayern Munich in the 2012/13 UEFA Champions League final at Wembley.
Watch: See how Jürgen Klopp transformed Dortmund
3) He worked in the English Premier League
Terzic had just been appointed the Dortmund U16 head coach when - a couple of weeks into the summer of 2013 - he informed the club of an offer he felt was too good to turn down.
It came about because of a chance encounter some time previously. With a mother from Croatia, Terzic would have felt at home when he arrived in the country on a scouting mission for Dortmund. Over dinner, an agent he met there said he would introduce him to his brother - who turned out to be then-Croatia manager Slaven Bilic.
"I didn't think about it until I was at a game in Sweden and three days before the European Championship in 2012 I got a phone call," Terzic told the West Ham website.
"I didn’t respond. Then I got another phone call and didn't respond. Then I got a message: 'Please call me back. Regards, Slaven Bilic."
"So I thought I better call back! I called back, and that's the story of how we met each other in 2012."
When former Karlsruher, Everton and West Ham defender Bilic was appointed manager of Turkish top-flight side Besiktas in 2013, the Croatian invited Terzic to join him.
Two years later the pair again linked up in London when Bilic moved on to West Ham. They led the Hammers to 7th and 11th-placed finishes in the Premier League during their time there between August 2015 and November 2017.
"For someone of my age and my background, it was unbelievable to have these experiences," Terzic told Ruhr Nachrichten. "The time I spent in Turkey and England was very valuable for me."
4) He's loved by his players
Terzic took over from Favre in mid-December and revitalised a Dortmund team which was struggling to spark into life midway through the 2020/21 campaign. Since then, BVB have clinched a DFB Cup title and are on the brink of qualification for the UEFA Champions League.
All of this has come from Terzic's management style which has seen him get the best out of the likes of Erling Haaland, Jadon Sancho and even club captain Marco Reus. All that has formed mutual love between the players and coach, and management above.
"Edin Terzic did a great job. He took over the team in December when it was half dead and he brought it to life", said Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke. While Gio Reyna praised how Terzic "lets me be free as an attacker. We play at high intensity, with new energy and new life."
5) He's Dortmund through and through
Favre's time as head coach came to an end after a 5-1 defeat at home to VfB Stuttgart left Dortmund fifth in the table after 11 matchdays of the 2020/21 campaign.
With games coming thick and fast in a condensed season following the coronavirus lockdown earlier in the year, Terzic was asked to take over on an interim basis until the summer.
It represented another huge opportunity for the 38-year-old, who favours an aggressive and attacking style of football. It's also something of a surreal experience for someone so attached to the club.
"It's an unbelievable situation," Terzic said at the first press conference following his promotion in December 2020. "Most people know that I come from the region. I was born 30 kilometres [18 miles] from here, and I was in the stadium for the first time as a nine-year-old. After that it was clear which team my heart was beating for.
"But despite that, I never dared dream that I would find myself in such a position at the club."