“We help each other improve”

Danijel Zenkovic discusses his first week as assistant coach at Werder
New assistant coach Danijel Zenkovic (Photo: nordphoto).
First Team
Thursday, 20.08.2020 / 15:19

Almost three weeks have passed since Danijel Zenkovic started working for SV Werder Bremen. Although this isn’t a long time, it’s been a short but intense 18 days at the club for Zenkovic.  "It feels like I've always been here," says the Austrian from Werder’s training camp in Zillertal.

Born in Cazin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Danijel Zenkovic has already experienced a number of places in his still young career as a player and a coach, with spells in the Netherlands and Germany, as well as Austria. But starting at Werder has been especially easy for him: “I’ve been made to feel very welcome by everyone here at the club. They’ve made it very easy for me to settle in.” Up until the summer, Zenkovic was working as assistant coach at Austrian Bundesliga side TSV Hartberg following a three-year stint as youth coach in the Netherlands at Ajax.

Danijel Zenkovic is keen to engage with the players (Photo: nordphoto).

It was Werder’s fitness coach Günther Stoxreiter and assistant coach Tim Borowski who first made contact with Zenkovic, before head coach Florian Kohfeldt also accelerated talks: “The conversation with Flo was instrumental to my decision. He gave me a great feeling about everything,” he says of his move to Bremen. This feeling turned out to be right. “Flo gives the coaching team the space to express our opinions and discuss them with him. He listens to our thoughts and incorporates them. We help each other improve.” This is an important factor for the young coach, who is a specialist in education studies and a qualified teacher.

This can be observed from his day-to-day work with the team, as Zenkovic is keen to engage with the players. The former youth coach could also benefit from the fact that he is 33 years old and therefore a similar age to the players. But age doesn’t matter he insists. “It's important that you try to get close to the players. That you engage with them, support them and give them a positive feeling."

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