Fort Worth’s Ted Lasso is a German football coaching star
A former Fort Worth high school football quarterback went to Germany to extend his playing career by a year or two, and he ended up being a real life version of Ted Lasso.
Jordan Neuman led Western Hills to the Texas state playoffs as the starting quarterback, won a 2001 state championship in baseball there, and after finishing his college career at McMurry he had a chance to play football in a country where football isn’t football.
“I was sitting with my mom at home in Fort Worth and she said, ‘You can go to Germany, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll come back,” Neuman said.
The plan to was to play for a few years, and return to Texas to coach football.
All of that happened, except he didn’t quite make it back to Texas.
He met a girl. He fell in love. He fell in love with her. He fell in love with Germany. And Germany fell in love with Jordan Neuman.
Because of football.
American rules football has been slowly growing overseas for the last 20 years, and the sport is on solid footing, particularly in Germany.
Neuman is the current head coach of the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns, which is about one hour north of Stuttgart. He is married with two kids, and he was recently named the head coach of the German National team.
“There had always been this inner struggle of when was I going to go back to Texas to coach,” Neuman, 37, said in a recent phone interview from his home in Germany.
“There just came this moment when I realized I loved what I am doing. I love the level of play. I love Germany. I love the culture. My wife is from here. My kids are from here.
“I just said, ‘I’m here.’ It was a huge relief.”
From Texas football to Germany football
When Neuman was done playing at McMurry University in Abilene in 2005 he had an offer to try out for an Arena League team, and one week later he received a letter in the mail from a team in Germany that needed a quarterback.
The American rules football leagues in Europe are littered with former mid major, or small college, players from the United States who seek to extend their careers.
With the blessing of his mother, Neuman took off to a little town in Germany that “looks like you’ve been dropped into a Disney movie,” he said.
He was making about 500 Euros a month, and his meals, housing and car were covered. When he wasn’t playing, he traveled all over Europe to see as much of the world as he could.
He played for four years, and then pursued coaching. Just in Germany. He became the team’s offensive coordinator in 2009, and two years later went to the Vienna Vikings as their OC.
He came back to Schwäbisch Hall in 2014 where he was their offensive coordinator. In 2017, he was named their head coach.
When asked if he’s heard the complaints from fans, or if the pressure on an American rules football head coach is similar to maybe that of a soccer team in Germany, or a major college or NFL team, he said, “Well, there is pressure for sure, but, we’re 50-1 since I became the head coach. So I really haven’t heard anything.”
An American footballer in Germany
Since moving to Germany Neuman has become a beer snob.
“German beer to American beer isn’t even close,” he said.
He has mastered the language, and conducts all of his interviews in German. His children, ages 9 and 6, can speak English, and the family typically speaks English in the house. The kids’ favorite TV show is Friends.
He tells all of his players to leave the city of 40,000 as much as possible to travel and see the rest of Europe.
The level of football, he says, is similar to Division II or Division III in America. His roster has players ages 19 to 36.
The player he finds is typically just off the NFL radar, but has a shot at the Canadian Football League or landing an NFL tryout.
The atmosphere at the games looks to be something like a small college, with some crowds sometimes more than 20,000.
Germany is starting to send some players to the United States. Receiver Moritz Boehringer played for Neuman and was a sixth-round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings in 2016. He was a briefly a practice squad player.
TCU’s first official recruit for its class of 2021 is quarterback Alexander Honig, who grew up playing in Germany.
“This is something I’m very passionate about,” Neuman said. “The level of play here now is so much better than when I first got here.”
To develop their own players, the rules state a team can have two Americans on the field at the same time, but, as Neuman said, “There are loopholes” to these regulations.
Neuman has started his own football academy in Germany, and he will soon coach the German national team in international games against teams from Japan, Mexico, Austria, Sweden, Spain, etc.
“I had to explain it to my family. It’s like being the head coach of an Olympic team,” he said. “We will play America at some point.”
Where American rules football is today overseas is akin to where the game of soccer was in the United States near the end of the 1980s. There is a market for it, and it is growing.
And a two-sport star from Fort Worth, Texas, is a big part of it.
Jordan Neuman is doing exactly what he always wanted. To the pride, and “disappointment,” of his mother, he’s just doing it in Germany.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
