Bundesliga coach takes over Ludogorets

PFC Ludogorets has appointed the German specialist Thomas Reis as head coach of the first team.

The 52-year-old coach is already in Razgrad, where he has finalized his agreement with the club management. On Monday, he will lead the "Eagles" for his first training session. On Tuesday at 14:00 at the "Huvepharma Arena" stadium, Thomas Reis will be officially presented to the media together with his coaching staff.

The German specialist arrives in Razgrad together with his team. His assistants will be the experienced Dutch specialist Ton Lokhoff and the Bosnian with an Austrian passport Daniel Zenkovic.

Ton Lokhoff has had an impressive career both as a footballer and as a coach. As a player, he recorded nearly 600 matches for NAC Breda, PSV Eindhoven, and Feyenoord. In his coaching career, he has been head coach of NAC Breda, Excelsior, and VVV-Venlo, and as an assistant coach, he has worked on the staff of Red Bull Salzburg, PAOK, Stuttgart, Wolfsburg, and Samsunspor.

Zenkovic was an assistant coach at Werder Bremen from 2020 to 2022. Subsequently, he worked at Belgian club Brugge and German RB Leipzig.

Thomas Reis comes to Ludogorets after an extremely successful period at the helm of Turkish Samsunspor. The German specialist took over the team in 2024, built a competitive squad, and in the 2024/25 season led the team to a historic third place in the Superliga – the club’s best ranking in decades. Thanks to this success, Samsunspor secured participation in European club tournaments for the first time in nearly 30 years.

The success of Samsunspor continued on the European stage. Under Reis’s leadership, the Turkish team overcame the main phase of the Conference League and reached the elimination stage of the competition, strengthening the impressions of the excellent work of the German specialist and turning the club into one of the pleasant surprises in the tournament.

Before his time in Turkey, Thomas Reis built a solid reputation in Germany as well. As head of Bochum, he won the 2. Bundesliga title in the 2020/21 season and returned the club to the German top flight after an 11-year absence. Afterwards, he led Schalke 04, and at the beginning of his coaching career, he worked in the academies of Bochum and Wolfsburg.

PFC Ludogorets wishes Thomas Reis and his team much success as leaders of the 14-time champions of Bulgaria.