Alexander Blessin's First Bundesliga Win with Borussia Mönchengladbach
Alexander Blessin’s return to Stuttgart had all the ingredients for a sentimental football story. Hometown. Family in the stands. A first league win with his new club.
He refused to play the lead role.
On Friday night at the MHPArena, the 53-year-old Stuttgart native oversaw Borussia Mönchengladbach’s first Bundesliga victory of the season, a breathless 3-2 comeback against VfB Stuttgart that snapped a six-match losing run and hauled the club away from an unwanted piece of history. Lose again, and Gladbach would have been the first team ever to open a Bundesliga campaign with seven straight defeats.
They didn’t. They bent, they wobbled, but they finally punched back.
When it was over, Blessin didn’t head straight down the tunnel. He climbed into the stands, weaving through rows of seats to reach his family, who had watched him coach under real pressure in the city where he grew up. It was a rare, private moment in a very public job.
The questions that followed were predictable. How did it feel to win here, in Stuttgart, with his own people looking on?
Blessin cut straight through the romance.
"I'm simply happy for the team," he said. "We've had six games [without a win]. Granted, I've only been involved in two of them, but you could naturally sense the gloomy mood a little."
Those six games had weighed on everyone at the club. Players. Staff. Supporters. A traditional power drifting at the foot of the table, searching for a foothold. The manner of this win – from behind, away, against a strong Stuttgart side – offered more than just three points. It offered a pulse.
Yet Blessin refused to turn it into a personal fairytale.
"To be perfectly honest, I really don't care where the points come from," he added. "You can believe me on that. It's nice that the family is here and that we can celebrate together. But what matters for us as a club is getting these three points."
That was the theme of his night: emotion acknowledged, then parked. The table does not care where you were born.
Gladbach’s situation underlines that. Even with the victory, they remain bottom of the Bundesliga. The losing streak is over, the season is not. The margin for error is still thin, the workload still heavy.
So when a reporter tried a lighter angle – asking whether the coach, who lives near Stuttgart, might use the occasion to steal a short break with his family – Blessin quickly reset the focus.
"You do know that we have another cup game on Tuesday, right?" came the reply.
No days off. No detours. Not even for a homecoming.
Gladbach will stay overnight in Stuttgart, then fly back the following day. The plan is tight, the schedule unforgiving. Tuesday brings a DFB-Pokal tie away to Karlsruher SC, and Blessin wants his players back on their own training ground within 24 hours.
"We have three days to prepare for Karlsruhe," he explained. "To produce the same performance again, we need good preparation. That's why there won't be a day off."
That sentence tells you as much about his approach as any celebration shot or emotional embrace. A long-awaited first win, earned in dramatic fashion in his birthplace, is immediately converted into fuel for the next assignment.
The backdrop is romantic. The reality is ruthless. Gladbach have finally stopped the bleeding, but they are still lying at the bottom of the table, still fighting their way out of trouble, still one bad week from another crisis.
Blessin’s first Bundesliga win with the Foals came in the perfect setting, with his family close enough to touch. He made sure nobody mistook it for a holiday. The real home he is trying to secure is not in Stuttgart’s stands, but in the safety of mid-table – and that battle starts again on Tuesday in Karlsruhe.
