By FRANCO PANIZO
The Ft. Lauderdale Strikers will have more of a European flavor to them next year. Austrian, to be exact.
The Strikers announced on Tuesday afternoon that they were set to unveil their next head coach on Wednesday morning, but sources have revealed to SBI that the man hired to right the ship in Ft. Lauderdale is Austria native Gunther Kronsteiner.
Kronsteiner recently coached SV Villach of Austria’s third division, the Regionalliga.
According to sources, Kronsteiner has been courted by the Strikers for a couple of weeks now. Ft. Lauderdale had also talked to former Strikers assistant coach Jim Rooney as a potential replacement for the recently-dismissed Daryl Shore, but Rooney was given a low offer and decided to stay in his position as a U.S. Under-17 Men’s National Team assistant coach.
The Strikers are coming off an abysmal spring season in which they finished in last place in the league standings with a 2-8-2 record, scored just 10 goals and conceded 24. The club has been on a downward spiral since reaching and losing the NASL Championship Series back in October 2011.
Kronsteiner will make his Strikers head coaching debut on Aug. 3 when Ft. Lauderdale kick off their fall 2013 campaign with a road match against the New York Cosmos.
What do you think of this development? Expecting the Strikers to be improved in the fall season? Wishing Ft. Lauderdale would have signed someone else?
Share your thoughts below.
Good luck preparing your team with only 2 1/2 weeks until your first league game.
Actually the Regionalliga is the Austrian third division. Now VSV will have to avoid relegation into the Landesliga, tough times ahead for that club. But yes, Kronsteiner was sporting director and coach of Austria Wien.
Unbelievable. 4th division head coach? Are you kidding me? They are truly setting themselves up to a Fall-Season failure. It will be worst than Spring season. Why they didn’t bring Adrian Withbread – former PR Islanders and PR National Team? He knows the league and has lots of knowledge…
To be fair, Kronsteiner spent several seasons as a coach and Sporting Director for Austria Wien, one of that country’s most successful clubs. He left last summer as the club failed to pay employees on time. He took in the Regionaliga as a temporary stop-gap and guided the club to respectable 4th place but financial issues have forced the club to dump nearly their whole team and coaches. I don’t know if Kronsteiner is a good hire or not but he did have a successful run as a Sporting Director. We will see how this pans out.
Whitbread is coaching Antigua in USL for the remainder of the season.
Good, we were absolutely terrible this first half of the year.