On Monday, Onur Cinel was unveiled as FC Red Bull Salzburg interim coach, before he took charge of his first training session yesterday. Now it's time to get to know our new boss before he makes his first appearance on the ADMIRAL Bundesliga sidelines against SK Austria Klagenfurt on Sunday.
11 years at Schalke
Onur Cinel first took to coaching at the age of 24, gaining his first experiences in the youth ranks of Rot-Weiss Essen. After a brief spell at TuS Heven, Cinel joined Schalke 04, where he has spent the majority of his time in coaching. The highlight was his spell as the Gelsenkirchen outfit's U17 coach. Under Cinel's charge, the side were West German champions for two consecutive years while also winning the 2021/22 B Juniors Bundesliga on a penalty shoot-out against VfB Stuttgart. The coach from Essen took a sensational points average of 2.66 with the side. To put that into context - Pep Guardiola has a less impressive 2.34 points average at Manchester City.
He may be ours now, but Schalke and Cinel were clearly a dream pair! The 38-year-old has plenty of emotional memories of the club from the Ruhr District, after all. He told LAOLA1 recently that his father would take him on his shoulders to the club's old Parkstadion stadium. Gerhard Struber's successor - who has already developed the likes of Breel Embolo, Alexander Nübel and Alessandro Schöpf – has his sights firmly set on taking our Red Bulls to their eleventh league title in a row, before he is to assist Austria coach Ralf Rangnick in EURO 2024, with the first match at the tournament coming on his birthday against favourites France.
Cinel's first game in charge of our Red Bulls comes this Sunday at 17:00, with tickets for the clash against Klagenfurt still available:
