FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Eintracht Frankfurt has convinced Spanish coach Albert Riera to leave Slovenian league leader NK Celje and take over as head coach.
The 43-year-old Riera will take charge on Monday after agreeing on a contract through June 2028, the Bundesliga club said on Friday.
Riera succeeds Dino Toppmöller, who was fired on Jan. 18 after a winless run of four games. The streak has extended to seven games. Frankfurt lost its three matches under Dennis Schmitt, the under-21s coach who took over on an interim basis.
Schmitt will remain in charge for Bayer Leverkusen’s visit on Sunday.
Frankfurt said Riera specifically asked to remain Celje coach for one more game against Maribor on Sunday. Celje, based in the northeast of Slovenia, has a 12-point lead in the league, while Riera also helped the team reach the UEFA Conference League knockout phase playoffs.
Riera’s first job as coach was also in Slovenia, at Olimpija Ljubljana, which he led to a league and cup double in 2023. He then joined Celje, but left with the team on top of the league to join Bordeaux. He returned to Celje in 2024.
As a player, Riera was a left back/winger for Mallorca, Bordeaux, Espanyol, Liverpool, Olympiakos, Galatasaray and others. He also had a loan spell at Manchester City. He ended his career in Slovenia. Riera also made 16 appearances for Spain.
At Frankfurt, Riera’s first job will be to fix the team’s leaky defense. Frankfurt conceded three goals in all five games it played this year until last week’s 2-0 loss to Tottenham in the Champions League. Frankfurt was already eliminated at that stage.
“We have deliberately decided on a coach who plays modern, intensive and attacking football,” Frankfurt sporting director Markus Krösche said. “He has international experience, a clear playing philosophy and an equally clear approach in his day-to-day work with the team.”
Pablo Remon Arteta and Lorenzo Dolcetti were also joining as assistants to Riera after their last game with Celje.
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FILE - Auckland City's head coach Albert Riera attends a press conference at the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is demanding a civil rights investigation of Dr. Mehmet Oz, saying he discriminated against Armenians in a video claiming hospice fraud in Los Angeles, the latest front in the state’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration.
The Democratic governor's complaint, filed Thursday, came after Oz posted a video on social media in front of an Armenian bakery in Los Angeles, alleging that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud has taken place in the city and “quite a bit of it” was run by “the Russian Armenian mafia.” Oz is the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which certifies hospice providers to accept patients on government-subsidized health insurance.
Newsom's office argued in the complaint that Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations" that risked chilling participation in hospice and home care programs among the community targeted. His office said the claims had “already caused real-world harm” by dampening business at an Armenian bakery that is shown in the video.
“Mafia? There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hardworking business owners. I don’t understand why he’s mentioning just Armenians,” Movses Bislamyan, whose family-owned bakery appears in Oz’s video, told KABC-TV.
Oz in a post on X accused Newsom of trying to change the subject and failing to talk about Medicare fraud, though Medicare is a federally administered program.
“The problem isn’t isolated to California, though as far as our team can tell, it is the worst,” Oz said. He hasn’t shared details about the fraud being alleged.
Oz’s video also points to a larger Trump administration effort to spotlight fraud around the country. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.
Earlier in the week, Newsom acknowledged fraud in hospice care in California but said the state has been working for years to crack down on it. He noted he signed a law in 2021 to stop providing new hospice licenses over fraud concerns and said the state has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses in recent years. Another 300 hospices are being examined for possible fraud, Newsom’s office said. The state did not immediately provide a list of all businesses that have had their licenses revoked.
“We’ve identified and cracked down on hospice fraud for years, taking real action to protect patients and taxpayers,” Newsom said in a statement.
Oz's video shows him visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and pointing to a four-block radius that he says is home to 42 hospices, suggesting potential fraud. He references a business that he says was part of a $16 million fraud scheme. Oz describes the Armenian script on the businesses' signs while the camera pans to the bakery.
"You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect,” says Oz, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. He also claims there “has not been a lot of attention on these problems” in California.
Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said Oz’s comments invoke “easy stereotypes” about the Armenian community, which has deep roots in California.
More than 200,000 people of Armenian descent are estimated to live in Los Angeles County, where April is celebrated as Armenian History Month. A small section of Los Angeles is known as Little Armenia, and the suburban city of Glendale, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from where Oz recorded the video, is a center of the community.
Hamparian said Oz’s connections to Turkey are concerning. That nation's government does not acknowledge the killing and deportation of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 1900s, known as the Armenian genocide.
“Things have been dealt with at the state level, prosecutions have been made,” Hamparian said. “But Dr. Oz is taking this in an entirely destructive direction by scapegoating, by fear-mongering, by staging the theatric collective indictment of all Armenians.”
Turkey and Armenia have long been strained by historic grievances and Turkey’s alliance with Azerbaijan. The neighboring countries have no formal diplomatic ties, and their joint border has remained closed since the 1990s, though late last year they agreed to simplify visa procedures in an effort to normalize ties.
The feud is among many that have sprung up between Newsom, seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2028, and the Republican administration of President Donald Trump. Newsom and Trump have clashed over issues ranging from the federal administration’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles to the president’s efforts to block California’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars, a nationwide first.
Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press reporter Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed to this story.
California Governor Gavin Newsom is seen during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
