Rijera Signs with Red Star, Four Days Until Plzen
Red Star confirmed Friday that Albert Rijera is the new head coach, signed through June 2028. The presentation is Sunday at 14:00, his competitive debut is Thursday against Viktoria Plzen.
A sheet of paper with three points was taped to the wall of Eintracht Frankfurt’s locker room. Albert Rijera put it there himself, at his first meeting with the squad, before he said a word about the pitch or the opponent. On Sunday at 14:00, the same man walks into the media center at Rajko Mitic Stadium, this time as Red Star’s coach.
The club announced on Friday, August 14, that Rijera is the new head coach and has signed a two year contract running through June 2028. He takes over from Dejan Stankovic, who resigned after Red Star’s elimination by Hapoel Beer Sheva. That a deal had been reached was known for days, and we had already reported on it, but the length of the contract, the date of his first training session and the deadline now facing him were only confirmed now.
The coach who signed for two years
Rijera was born on April 15, 1982, in Manacor on Mallorca, and is 44 years old. As a player, he wore the Liverpool shirt. His first head coaching job came in 2022 at Olimpija Ljubljana, where he won both the league and the Slovenian Cup in the same season. He then had a brief spell at Celje before taking over French side Bordeaux in October 2023.
He returned to Celje in July 2024 and led the club to the quarterfinals of the Conference League in the 2024/25 season, adding another Slovenian Cup along the way. Three trophies in Slovenia and a European quarterfinal with a club from a town of roughly fifty thousand people: that is what Red Star bought.
His German chapter was short. He took charge of Eintracht Frankfurt in February this year and left after 107 days, having coached 14 matches and won five. He departed Frankfurt amid conflicts both inside and outside the locker room, and fans sent him off with a banner reading “Alberto, thanks for nothing.” He also left with an assessment of the league he had been working in.
“Teams in the bottom third of the table all play exactly the same way. When you analyze them, you get the feeling you are facing the same opponent every week.”
He becomes the fifth foreign coach at the red and whites who does not come from the former Yugoslav region, following Walter Zenga, Zdenek Zeman, Ricardo Sa Pinto and Barak Bahar. The deal was arranged through agent Endi Bara, of the Niagara agency.
Three rules that come before tactics
Rijera insists on three points in his work, and they are the first thing any squad hears from him:
- respect in the locker room
- you play the way you train
- a constant question of what you are giving the team, with the ball and without it
He spoke publicly about this during his time in Germany, and explained how those rules come to be.
“These three rules have to apply every single day. Everyone at the club has to respect them for us to build a good atmosphere.”
He enforces them without softening, as he said himself.
“The truth is I’m very strict about this, because it matters a great deal to me.”
By his own account, the rules apply not only to players but also to technical and medical staff and other club employees. In Frankfurt, he spent his first meeting with the team on discipline, not football.
What the four day deadline means
The club’s statement said Rijera has just four days to get to know his players. The presentation and first training session with the squad are set for Sunday, August 16, at 14:00 at the Rajko Mitic Stadium media center. His competitive debut comes on Thursday, August 20, at Marakana, against Viktoria Plzen, in the first leg of the Europa League qualifying playoff. The return leg is August 27 in the Czech Republic.
For a coach who lays down rules of conduct before he gets into tactics, that is very little time. The first meeting, the first training session and the first European match all fit into five days, with no friendly in between to test anything.
My assessment is that against Plzen, fans will not see Rijera’s team, but Stankovic’s team with a new voice on the bench. What can be judged on Thursday is how quickly the players respond to a change in tone. The first real test comes only in the return leg, on August 27.
