It was easier for his father. When Klaus Toppmöller made his Bundesliga debut as the new coach of Frankfurt Eintracht in 1993, he was able to field a well-established team. Uli Stein, Manfred Binz, Uwe Bein, Anthony Yeboah, Dietmar Roth, Uwe Bindewald, Ralf Weber, Ralf Falkenmayer and Jörn Andersen: They have all played in Frankfurt for years and knew almost blindly what to expect from the other and what not. They had developed automatisms that even the novice coach could rely on. When Dino Toppmöller makes his Bundesliga debut with Eintracht against Darmstadt 98 on the bench in two weeks, almost exactly 20 years after his father, then it’s possible that his starting eleven will still be strangers.
To what extent depends mainly on whether Randal Kolo Muani and Jesper Lindström are still in the squad or not. There are interested parties for the French World Cup star and the Danish youth star, both are not averse to a move to an attractive club with attractive salary conditions – and Eintracht sports director Markus Krösche has signaled very clearly that he does not want to sell his offensive artists, but that it would also be unreasonable to keep them if the transfer offers exceeded a certain sum. Krösche didn’t put an official price tag on the two’s foreheads, but he did hint that in the case of Kolo Muani, Eintracht would wince at an amount beyond 100 million euros and in the case of Lindström at around 35 million euros.