Matthias Jaissle opens up on the setbacks that shaped his football journey | OneFootball

“They questioned it in Saudi Arabia. Can you play that style when it is 40 degrees outside?” Matthias Jaissle asked in a small room behind Newcastle United’s indoor training pitch.

Focused on his every word were around 20 members of the North East football press pack, digesting the confidence exuded by the Magpies’ German head coach.

“Can you play it when players are maybe not at the physical level that you have had before?” he continued.

The answer had already come before the questions were even finished.

“The style will work anywhere.

“We showed it is possible. Look at Barcelona now and the way they are flying. I would not say that Hansi Flick is from the Red Bull dynasty, but there are a lot of elements in the way he works that you can see are from there.

“The players might have been more used to playing in a tiki-taka style, but they have adapted and you can see it is working.

“I was listening to Rodri and he was saying a lot about the physicality and the way they train now. It shows that it can be done in every league, in my eyes.”

Such assurance in one’s methods is hardly unusual in football and, for someone who Newcastle CEO David Hopkinson described as a “born winner”, it was perhaps no surprise to hear Jaissle speak with such certainty.

And yet, behind the slicked-back hair and grey tracksuit, there was an openness – and indeed a rawness – to Jaissle that had perhaps not yet been fully seen by the reporters sat around him on a cloudy September morning.

There are reasons why he is so determined to win.

The idea of a ‘get to know me’ session came from Jaissle himself. He wanted a chance to step away from the usual press conference back-and-forth and properly introduce himself to those who cover Newcastle United.

He entered shortly after 10am and immediately asked whether the breakfast on offer to the waiting journalists was any good.

One reporter asked whether he had tried black pudding yet. He had not, and did not know what it was, echoing an amusing scene from Goal! The Dream Begins involving Kuno Becker’s character, Santiago Muñez.

In the 2005 film, Muñez is depicted as someone who overcomes great adversity in his young life to eventually play in the Premier League for Newcastle United.

Jaissle, by comparison, “loved” his childhood.

“I grew up in a small village, so everything was nice, settled, calm,” he said.

“I got inspired because I was standing in the curve in the stadium as a youth kid and cheering for Stuttgart. I was a really passionate fan. So then seeing the lads on the pitch, I had that dream.”

There was, however, a darker side to those early years.

“I had a tumour when I was five years old, in the neck, I couldn’t move my neck to the side and I learnt a lot,” Jaissle revealed.

“I was only five years old but I learnt a lot about life already. How important it is to be healthy and how grateful you can be to be healthy and to follow your dream.

“I would say for sure that makes you the person you are, in whatever aspect it is. The belief that you can overcome every obstacle.

“But you know that every setback also has a positive side as well.

“So if you overcome these challenges, then you usually become stronger, more resilient.”

It was quite the admission from the now 38-year-old.

The atmosphere in the room had been jovial, but such a story immediately sharpened the mood. Jaissle is someone who naturally commands attention, but this felt like another level of focus altogether.

“That was one part,” Jaissle continued.

“Unfortunately, I was really unlucky with injuries. When I was in the youth team I missed a year, not being able to play a match.

“I was 16 but I think that gave me the discipline in life to really fight. At that age you are usually going out, partying, you could quit in that period, but I carried on.”

After joining Stuttgart’s academy, Jaissle was enrolled at what would effectively be described in the UK as a boarding school, forming part of the club’s youth setup.

He described life there as “only school, football, learning, sleeping.”

“No time for, you know what usually…” he added with a grin, lightening the mood again.

“It was worth it in the end because I made it as a footballer at 18.”

His move to Hoffenheim brought immediate first-team success, with Jaissle part of the side promoted to the Bundesliga in 2007/08.

The following season, Hoffenheim, only in their second campaign in professional football, were still top of the Bundesliga as late as matchweek 19 of 34.

They were “winter champions”, as Jaissle put it, before eventually slipping to seventh.

That decline coincided with what would ultimately prove to be a career-ending injury for Jaissle at just 20-years-old, despite his best efforts to carry on and prove the doctors wrong.

“I ruptured my ACL, my meniscus, the cartilage, everything. I was done.

“I knew then it could be difficult to carry on playing at the highest level. After four months I was still in a wheelchair.

“I was forced to quit. I was struggling for a couple of months, really down, tough to get motivated, tough to get your own rhythm again.”

Jaissle did not want to give up on football, however.

After a period of not quite knowing what he wanted to do, he soon found what he described as “a new purpose” and restored “joy” to his life.

Through online university courses, exams in Düsseldorf and an opportunity presented by Ralf Rangnick in Leipzig, Jaissle soon found himself working as an assistant to Sebastian Hoeneß.

“I knew him [Hoeneß] because we played together at Hoffenheim,” he said.

“Then I went to different departments – administration, sporting director, commercial, marketing – circling around on the training programme.

“I had so much fun in the first few weeks and Sebastian told me it would be nice if I stayed.

“I stayed with him for two years, finished my studies, my licences, and then I moved to Brøndby.

“And then you all know the other steps to Salzburg. It was quite fast actually – in retrospect it all feels like a dream, all the steps.

“I would say fast, but also smart.”

Jaissle sees Rangnick as a mentor because of those years at Hoffenheim and Leipzig.

“He was an early mover in Germany for that style of play, and many coaches were inspired by him,” he said.

“[Rangnick] inspired me a lot, it was always clear.

“I used to say that often we as players never had question marks in our head when we entered the pitch on matchday.

“You start really believing that this gaffer is doing something right.”

The Newcastle head coach also has close links to Thomas Tuchel, the current England manager.

“Thomas was a player under Rangnick in Ulm,” he explained, with Jaissle also playing under Tuchel himself as a youth player at Stuttgart.

There is a clear thread in terms of footballing philosophy passed down from Rangnick and through several of Germany’s modern coaches.

Tuchel did not need to warn Jaissle about what the Premier League would be like.

As he put it, he already knew.

The pace, the physicality, the small margins that decide games – all of it was exactly what he wanted for a style of “vertical football” he believes can thrive in England.

Not only that, Jaissle’s experience of the atmosphere inside St James’ Park has exceeded even his own expectations.

A banner displaying the words “Matty Jaissle’s Black and White Army” in only his second home game moved him greatly.

He recently invited members of Wor Flags to the training ground to thank them personally and also addressed the viral picture of him with a group of lads at a birthday meal in Newcastle after the recent win against Hull City.

“It’s crazy how everything comes out,” he said, prompting laughter around the room.

“They ask for a picture and you think, ‘They will just keep it for themselves.’

“It’s crazy but I really love the fans here and the people. They’re passionate but have a good sense of allowing you to keep your privacy and your distance.”

By that point, time was beginning to run short on Jaissle’s on-the-record session, leaving little opportunity for conversation afterwards.

The head coach was clearly enjoying himself, however, and spoke longer than initially planned, keen to keep adding blocks to the relationship developing between himself and the assembled reporters.

It was the first time such a get-together had taken place between a Newcastle head coach and the press since the days of Rafa Benítez.

A glimpse of first-team training followed, revealing Joelinton was back with the group.

It was another example of the openness Jaissle appears determined to show.

He had been reserved and, at times, combative during his first few weeks in the job and, given the situation he had inherited, perhaps that was understandable.

Now things have settled down, he clearly felt this was the right moment to show everyone who the man leading the playing side of ‘Newcastle 2.0’ really is.

What emerged was a young head coach entirely convinced by his methods, but also one shaped by serious setbacks and a relentless determination to overcome them.