Hannover 96 dismisses sporting director Jonas Boldt after five months in office

The dismissal

Hannover 96 has released sporting director Jonas Boldt with immediate effect, five months after he took up the post. The 44-year-old started on 1 June with the clear goal of returning the club to the Bundesliga, and he had signed a contract running to 31 May 2029. He is the second prominent football manager to leave the second-division club this calendar year after a short stay, following Jörg Schmadtke. Sky reported the decision first, and the club confirmed it on Saturday, 31 October. The supervisory board had planned to review Boldt's overall conduct in office, not only the result against Dynamo Dresden, but it acted earlier.

“The supervisory board responsible for appointing the management of Hannover 96 Management GmbH has unanimously agreed to dismiss Boldt. The decision takes effect immediately.”

A slide on the pitch

Hannover sit 16th in the table with eight points after nine matchdays, a position well below the promotion goal set for the season. The club also went out of the DFB-Pokal in the second round, beaten by 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Under new coach Sandro Wagner the side has still not won, and it lost three of its last four competitive matches. According to Sky information, the coaching question is being assessed separately from Boldt's case, and Wagner retains the backing of the key decision makers. Bild reported in late October, after the 0:2 derby defeat at Eintracht Braunschweig, that supervisory board chairman and long-serving club boss Martin Kind had turned away from Boldt early on.

Coach and transfer disputes

Boldt fell out with coach Christian Titz early in pre-season, the two disagreeing sharply over squad planning, squad size and the signings they wanted. Titz was dismissed after the fifth matchday in September, and Boldt then brought in Wagner. The summer transfer business also drew criticism. Noel Aseko (Eintracht Frankfurt), Enzo Leopold (Borussia Mönchengladbach) and Daisuke Yokota (Glasgow Rangers) all left for top-flight clubs. Their replacements, Marcel Hartel (30) and Berat Sahiti (27), have so far failed to convince on the pitch and carry little resale value. The sequence of key dates is shown below.

What comes next

Henning Bindzus now runs Hannover 96 GmbH & Co. KGaA alone as managing director, with the club saying nothing about the financial consequences of the early exit. The board had originally planned to review Boldt's work in the coming week, and that review has now been overtaken by events. Whether a successor will be sought soon has not been decided. Who handles the sporting area in the meantime has not yet been announced.