Wolfsburg bring in Hasenhuettl for sacked Kovac

Bundesliga strugglers Wolfsburg appointed former RB Leipzig and Southampton coach Ralph Hasenhuettl on Sunday as Niko Kovac's replacement.

The Austrian is tasked with keeping Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga, with the German side without a win in the league this year.

Hasenhuettl, 56, will be unveiled at a press conference on Monday and will take charge of training on Tuesday ahead of his first game on March 30 at Werder Bremen.

Hasenhuettl guided RB Leipzig to second place in the Bundesliga in their first season in the top flight in 2016-17 before being replaced by Julian Nagelsmann in 2018.

He took charge of Southampton the same year, becoming the first Austrian to coach a Premier League team. He has been out of work since being fired by the club in 2022.

Hasenhuettl arrives at Wolfsburg with the team in freefall having not won any of their last 11 Bundesliga games, a run which has left the side in 14th place.

After a 3-1 loss at home to Augsburg on Saturday, the team sit just six points above the relegation play-off place.

"After the defeat against FC Augsburg, analysing the game and the overall situation, we came to the decision to end our cooperation (with Kovac)," Wolfsburg's managing director Marcel Schaefer said in a statement.

"We regret the development and believe it is necessary to give the team new impetus in order to stabilise the situation," Schaefer said.

Kovac's assistant and younger brother Robert Kovac has also left the club with immediate effect, Wolfsburg said.

The elder Kovac joined Wolfsburg ahead of the 2022-23 season, in which the team finished eighth.

But the former Croatian international's second season in charge has seen him unable to sustain the same level of performance.

Before joining Wolfsburg, Kovac served as the manager of the Croatian national team, as well as coaching Bundesliga sides Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayern Munich.

Despite winning the Bundesliga and the domestic cup with Bayern in 2019, Kovac was let go by the Bavarian giants amid a poor run of form the following season.

Kovac took his next job with Ligue 1 side Monaco in 2020, before his return to the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg two years later.