to what by then had become his second home, Switzerland. There, he played from 1978 to 1980 with FC Lugano before joining FC Luzern, where he finished his playing career in 1983, aged 34. Managerial career 1983–1991: Coaching in Switzerland During the summer of 1983, Hitzfeld signed his first coaching contract with SC Zug, in the second tier of Swiss football. The team ended the 1983–84 season as Nationalliga B champions. Thus Hitzfeld and his team achieved immediate promotion to the Nationalliga A, for the first and only time in the clubs history. In 1984, he followed an offer to coach FC Aarau, where he settled for four years. His tenure there was crowned with his first title as coach, the 1985 Swiss Cup. Soon he attracted also the attention of the major Swiss club Grasshopper in Zürich. Between 1988 and 1991, he gained another four trophies there, starting with a repeat of his cup victory by the end of his first season. The next year, he followed up with the double before finishing his engagement with the defence of the Swiss Championship in 1991. 1991–1998: Borussia Dortmund In 1991, Hitzfeld became manager of Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund. In his first year, he and his assistant Michael Henke, with whom he would collaborate for the next 13 years, took the team to second spot in the league, securing a 1992–93 UEFA Cup place. The following season, Dortmund reached the finals of this competition, but both matches were lost against Juventus. In 1995, he gained his first Bundesliga title with Dortmund, their first trophy since the DFB-Pokal in 1989, and Hitzfeld's first trophy in Germany. In 1995–96, he had a successful defence of the title, but the great triumph had to wait for another year: in 1997, Dortmund finished third in the league, but reached the UEFA Champions League final, where another encounter with Juventus was due. This time, Borussia prevailed 3–1 in Munich's Olympiastadion against the team from northern Italy which featured Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamps, and Christian Vieri, amongst others. For his success, Hitzfeld was rewarded for the first time with the "World Coach of the Year" award, but as frictions with the team had come to a head, he was promoted out of the firing line to the position of sports manager with the club, where he witnessed his successor, Nevio Scala, taking Borussia Dortmund to win the