Football coach and manager, columnist, entrepreneur, supermarket owner

Holger Stanislawski, born in Hamburg in 1969, is a former German football player and coach. In 2014, he changed career and is now a successful entrepreneur and the managing director of a branch of the REWE retail chain in Hamburg-Winterhude.

Lecture topics Holger Stanislawski:

  • Success and failure in sports: how business can learn from it.
  • Team leadership: A team wins. Always.
  • Motivation and leadership: How far can monetary motivation go?
  • Being different – Innovative thinking in sports and business.
  • Teamwork in everyday life: From elite soccer to the cheese counter.

His football career began as a youth player for Bramfelder SV and Hamburger SV. From July 1993, Holger Stanislawski played for FC St. Pauli in the sweeper position. In 2004, a protracted inflammation in his knee resulting from a torn ligament forced him to draw curtains on his active playing career. However, he continued pursuing his passion for sports by training as a sports manager. From 2006 until 2011, Stanislawski was the manager of FC St. Pauli and instrumental in helping the club rejoin the 2nd Bundesliga. Following his tenure at the Hamburg club, he became managing director of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim before taking up the same position at 1. FC Köln in the 2012/13 season.

Despite enjoying considerable success, Holger Stanislawski decided in 2014 to interrupt his career as a football coach and embark on an entirely new path. Together with the former HSV pro footballer Alexander Laas, he took over the management of a center of the German REWE retail chain in Hamburg-Winterhude. He draws parallels primarily in the area of motivation between his work as a football coach and manager and that of a retail manager and entrepreneur.

In his presentations, Holger Stanislawski talks about his extensive and varied experience as an athlete and topics such as success and failure, motivation and perseverance.