Otte joins goalkeeping coaching staff
Craig Mawson, the academy goalkeeping coach, left Burnley a few months ago to join Manchester United and today the Clarets have confirmed that Fabian Otte, a 29-year-old German, has joined the club as Mawson’s replacement.
Like Mawson, he will work in the academy while assisting Billy Mercer with the first team goalkeepers and Mercer said of him: “He’s enthusiastic, wants to do well and with his qualifications and background getting him is a real coup for us.”
Mercer added: “We have had a lot of success at first-team level with goalkeepers we have brought into the club. I had a chat with the gaffer and the chairman and said it would be nice if we could produce one of those through our own system. With the right people in the right places that will give us a better opportunity of bringing one through to get into the first team.”
Otte has spent the last two years with Hoffenheim as coach of their under-23 side and is already in place at Turf Moor. “Everybody has been unbelievably nice,” he said. “I haven’t been able to meet too many people at the club from outside the bubble but everyone has been so welcoming.”
Having worked in New Zealand, England, with Blyth Spartans, and the USA, he returned to Germany and said of his time with Hoffenheim: “I had a great mentor (Michael Rechner) and working at Hoffenheim was a great learning curve, being part of first-team training and coaching the under-23s, who play men’s football in Germany.
““But we wanted to go to England, and this was the right place at the right time and I am so lucky this opportunity came up. This is a great league to be in. Germany has a really good culture, but English football is unique and very special, and the goalkeeping group at Burnley is unbelievable. All the goalkeepers in the group are very good but very different, which makes it interesting for a goalkeeping coach.
“It’s exciting to see them in training every day and I will be asking Billy to have an eye for goalkeepers like he has. He has had so many good ones and I will also be trying to develop our own through the younger age groups who can go on and play for the first team.
“We have Lukas who is a great kid with a bright future, and he is a candidate right there. We want a reputation where the best young keepers want to play for Burnley, and we can develop them and perhaps we won’t have to buy a goalkeeper anymore.”
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