Bo Henriksen is a wild man. With his long, sleek blonde hair, he looks like he may have performed on some stages and broken a few guitars.
The 49-year-old has been head coach of Bundesliga club Mainz for just over two months. A former centre-forward whose playing career spanned his native Denmark, Iceland and even Kidderminster Harriers and Bristol Rovers in England’s lower divisions, he is now leading a remarkable revival on the banks of the Rhine.
“We’re starting to get there,” says Henriksen Athleticism. “We have not achieved our objectives. But we are improving.
A team that was lifeless for six months of the 2023-24 season is now playing with frenetic energy, resilience and craftsmanship. On Sunday it continued. Mainz came from a goal down to take a valuable point away against Freiburg. Now undefeated for five years, a team which won one of its first 21 league matches is excluded from the relegation places for the first time since August.
When Henriksen was appointed, few believed that Mainz could survive. The table did not lie; the team he inherited didn’t score enough goals and conceded far too many.
“I don’t believe in luck,” he said. “I believe in performance. Maybe it’s luck for a game, but if you’ve played 21 games and only won one, it’s not a coincidence.
It had been an exhausting campaign.
Bo Svensson, the popular former Mainz head coach and another Dane, who spent five years with the club as a player from 2009, left by mutual agreement in November. Svensson saved the team from near-certain relegation three years ago after being appointed in January, before leading them successively into the top half. But with his job threatened and his team at the end of its rope, an exhausted Svensson announced his departure in a tearful video.
Jan Siewert, the former head coach of Huddersfield Town, was given the opportunity to revive the team, but with little success. That led them three months later to Henriksen, whose coaching career had begun in the Danish second division with Bronshoj, developed into six largely excellent years at Horsens and culminated in a Danish Cup win with Midtjylland and almost a Superliga title as well.
In October 2022, he was hired by FC Zurich. It was his first job outside of Denmark and his mission was to rebalance a withering team that was languishing at the bottom of the Swiss Super League.
When he arrived, Zurich had been winless in 10 matches, but Henriksen turned them into a team that lost just six times over the next seven months. This season has also started brightly, but with his contract expiring this summer and the chance to coach in a higher level competition in the Bundesliga, the decision to leave in February – and join a team seemingly certain of relegation – has been taken. easier than it seemed.
“I thought it was a really good opportunity,” Henriksen says. “First of all, survive in the Bundesliga, then take the next step. In the short term, it was a test for me in a large environment. It’s a club that has been successful for many years and also has a very good culture.
Mainz is part of the origin story of Jurgen Klopp (a player for them, then their manager from 2001 to 2008) and Thomas Tuchel (2009 to 2014), and the subsequent successes of these two have prompted all world to follow in their footsteps.
The next Klopp. The next Tuchel. These comparisons are not helpful, but there are commonalities among those who have driven Mainz beyond their means. A personality type, perhaps: energetic, charismatic, capable of captivating players. This stuff worked there.
Mainz knew what they were looking for. When announcing Henriksen’s appointment, sporting director Christian Heidel described a “very emotional, open and opinionated coach, who exudes incredibly positive energy and adapts very well.”
You don’t have to spend much time in Henriksen’s presence to see what Heidel saw and know that he was right. Henriksen has an effervescence in him. On the touchline, in an interview, he radiates positivity and optimism, and it’s not hard to imagine how he might lift the spirits of previously jaded players.
“I believe in the people here,” he said. “And in what I see and feel in this club. I’m afraid of nothing other than not being brave enough to dare to win.
Henriksen really thinks so. He wants faster, more targeted football. He wants it to be infused with ideas, beliefs and more holistic change: “I can’t save anyone. I can only create a culture in which we can save ourselves. Because they tried everything. When I analyzed the 21 matches (played in the league this season before my arrival), I didn’t see any players who weren’t doing their best.
“We need to unlock these players and give them the freedom to play and make mistakes. I can’t teach them to play football in two days, five days or even five weeks. But I hope we can create a culture where we can do things together.
“It’s still the most important part of every job I have. And this is not only true in football. If people don’t feel comfortable, if they aren’t happy and don’t feel open, then they won’t be the best version of themselves.
Suddenly, the players transform.
Jonathan Burkardt, a waspish forward, has recovered from a year away from a knee injury and is playing superbly. Playmaker Lee Jae-sung came out of a miserable slump. Brajan Gruda, perhaps the club’s most talented young player, renews his attack. Anthony Caci in the back. Robin Zentner in goal. The improvements are too numerous to mention.
Players put to sleep by a long season of defeats have fire in their eyes again. The conservative and fearful football has also disappeared, and Henriksen and his team have managed to chase away the fear that haunted this team.
“I don’t care about mistakes, I care if you don’t go back,” Henriksen says. “I care if you don’t put your teammates above everyone else. This is the culture we currently rely on. I’m proud of the guys.
Mainz looked so desperate in February that in reality they needed empathy as much as anything else. Henriksen approached his new job with compassion, recognizing that players needed rehabilitation.
“I went there as a player,” he says. “You want to do your best, but you can’t. It can be in an emotional way. It can be physical. Maybe it’s because you don’t dare (to express yourself). Or because you don’t trust your teammates. It can be all kinds of things.
He also believes that reversing poor form starts with stopping the cycle of doom that traps underperforming teams:
“If everyone – journalists like you and everyone else – talks bad about the players, and then they go home and get a call from their parents asking why they lost again, then they read the papers the next day and everyone talks bad about them…it goes on and on Eventually they start to believe they are bad.
“It’s difficult for the players. Especially for young players. Some of us are 19 years old. Imagine that when you’re 19! Today, gamers can’t go anywhere without social media. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to be a young person in this world.
“So, I’m their leader. I have to stand in front of this group and say, “We will win together, we will lose together and as long as you do your best, everything else is my fault.”
Henriksen really thinks so. When it arrived, there was a quick bounce. Mainz beat visitors Augsburg 1-0 in their first match, and were narrowly beaten 2-1 away by title-bound Bayer Leverkusen in their second, although they only remained only 10 men left. In his third match, his players fought to achieve a creditable 1-1 draw at home against Borussia Mönchengladbach.
However, in the second week of March, Mainz traveled to Munich for their fourth match, where this fragile progress was shattered. Trailing only 2-1 at the end of the first half, they ended up losing 8-1 to champion Bayern; unsurprisingly, their heaviest defeat of the season. It was about him, Henriksen claims, a match he had thought too much about.
“You can use whatever tactics you want,” says Henriksen. “We did it against Bayern. I was really, really smart – so smart – and we talked about tactics all week. We had planned down to the smallest detail what each player should do. I thought I could win this match tactically, and every time I think I can, I lose.
The key, he says – the lesson he learned the hard way – is that players being comfortable with what they’re being asked to do matters more than anything. Especially with Mainz in its current situation.
“I’ve played every system as a coach,” he says, “and for me it’s not about formations, it’s about what the players can do. What do they feel safe in? What do they feel comfortable in?
“I don’t play the game, they do. So, I ask my players a lot: what do they trust? What have they tried before? If I go into the locker room and say, ‘We have to do this, this and this,’ and the players aren’t comfortable, then I’m going to look stupid. Because we would do it for me, then I may look good.
“I don’t need to look good. I don’t look good anyway. I haven’t looked good in 49 years, so why should I start now?!”
That defeat against Bayern now feels like the moment Mainz’s season changed. They are unbeaten in five matches, with three wins, 11 goals scored and two conceded. The most recent point, in the draw at Freiburg on Sunday, saw them climb out of their relegation place.
“The day after the Munich game, we just said to the guys: ‘Okay, we’re going back to your basics and what you’ve been known for for a long time.’ Because they had very good coaching, especially under by Bo Svensson, when they knew exactly what to do, tactically, to the point where it was integrated.
“Now it’s about the fight, the ability, whether we can trust each other. Every tackle. One ball out of two. What is Mainz? They know exactly what to do. We just need to get this out there.
On Sunday, Mainz will host Cologne, second behind. Victory will not guarantee safety but three points for Henriksen and his players will make them favorites to avoid the drop.
Just six weeks ago, this was unthinkable.
(Top photo: Alex Grimm/Getty Images)