Tragic

Jörg Berger: Jörg Berger was a respected football coach in the GDR who was reportedly destined to succeed Georg Buschner as national team manager. In 1979, while coaching the GDR youth squad, he used a match in Yugoslavia to defect to the West. There he took charge of SV Darmstadt 98 in the 2. Bundesliga that same year. Berger also managed SC Freiburg from 1986 to 1988. As a GDR defector, his life was under threat from Stasi operations in the West. In the mid-1980s, while coaching Hessen Kassel, he survived a poisoning attempt. After reunification, he gained certainty about further assassination plots when reviewing his Stasi files. In 2002, while coaching Alemannia Aachen, Berger took an extended break due to surgery for an intestinal tumour. In 2005, he underwent another operation for liver metastases, followed by further chemotherapy in November 2008. On June 23, 2010, Jörg Berger succumbed to cancer.

Marcus Sorg: Marcus Sorg was the first. The first coach to be sacked by SC Freiburg — then bottom of the table — in the Bundesliga, in late December 2011. In Freiburg, a managerial dismissal was a kind of sensation. The bottom-placed club had to learn that internal promotions don't always lead to success. Nevertheless, the club opted for the next internal solution. Sorg's assistant took over the job. Bad luck for Sorg, good fortune for SC Freiburg: the assistant was Christian Streich.