Max Eberl

Born in Bogen, Eberl's career as a professional footballer began in 1991 as a defender with Bayern Munich. A highly rated youngster, he represented Germany at the 1993 FIFA World Youth Championship in Australia. During the tournament he started the group games against Ghana and Portugal. After making only one Bundesliga appearance in two years at Munich, Eberl dropped down a division to the 2. Bundesliga to play for VfL Bochum. Eberl spent four seasons at Bochum, split evenly between the top two divisions, before moving to Greuther Fürth. He spent only 18 months playing for Greuther Fürth before moving to Borussia Mönchengladbach halfway through the 1998–99 season. Eberl saw out the rest of his career with Mönchengladbach, retiring in 2005. In a career lasting over 200 games in the first and second Bundesliga, Eberl did not score a single goal.

Borussia Mönchengladbach

At the beginning of 2005, Eberl worked as youth coordinator at Borussia Mönchengladbach; he was still officially part of the squad for the 2004/05 season. After head coach Jos Luhukay was dismissed on 5 October 2008, Eberl and Steffen Korell took over responsibility for finding a new coach; sports director Christian Ziege coached the professional team as interim coach. When Borussia and Eberl's former head coach Hans Meyer took over as head coach on 19 October 2008, Eberl took over the position of sports director from Christian Ziege, who became co-coach under Meyer. On 24 June 2010, he was promoted to the management board of Borussia Mönchengladbach GmbH as managing director of sports.

Following the resignation of Hans Meyer, Eberl hired Michael Frontzeck for the 2009/10 season, whom he retained for a long time despite relegation worries in 2011. After two consecutive defeats against direct rivals (2–3 against VfB Stuttgart on matchday 21 and 1–3 at St. Pauli on matchday 22), Frontzeck was dismissed. One day later, Lucien Favre was appointed as the new coach. This initiated a race to catch up, which ended with 36 points and saw them reach the relegation spot. Borussia Mönchengladbach came out on top in the deciding matches against VfL Bochum. This was followed by a very successful era for Borussia under coach Lucien Favre, in which they qualified for the Europa League twice and for the group stage of the Champions League for the first time…