Tayfun Korkut

Tayfun Korkut — Biography

Tayfun Korkut is a midfielder born in Germany who won 42 caps and scored once for the Turkey national team, played at the 1996 and 2000 European Championships and later became a Bundesliga coach. As the second Turkish-origin head coach in the Bundesliga after Özcan Arkoç, he spent about a year and a half in charge of Hannover 96. He speaks Turkish, German, Spanish and English.

Raised near Stuttgart, Korkut joined the Stuttgarter Kickers academy at 12. At 21 he moved to Fenerbahçe, where in his first season he scored five goals in 30 matches and won the league; he was also in the squad that won the Prime Minister's Cup and the Atatürk Cup in 1998. After five seasons he went to Real Sociedad together with Arif Erdem and played alongside Nihat Kahveci in the 2002-03 season, which ended in second place. After Espanyol he returned to Turkey with Beşiktaş in 2004, spent half a season at Gençlerbirliği and retired in 2006.

He began coaching in the Real Sociedad academy, then trained Hoffenheim's under-17s in 2009 and Stuttgart's under-19s in 2011-12, and in 2012-13 was an assistant coach with the national team. Appointed at Hannover 96 on December 31, 2013, he finished 2013-14 in tenth place; he left the post in April 2015. In the following years he had short spells at Kaiserslautern, Bayer Leverkusen, VfB Stuttgart and Hertha BSC (2021-22). His son Efe is also a professional footballer.