Daniel Stendel is back in football management after agreeing to take over at Nancy.
The German left Hearts last summer after Ann Budge moved to bring Robbie Neilson back to Tynecastle.
A break clause in Stendel’s contract was activated after the Jambos were demoted to the Championship.
The former Barsnsley boss worked for free after Scottish football was forced to shutdown due to the Covid pandemic and admitted he was keen to stay on in Gorgie.
But Budge opted to bring Neilson back from Dundee United and he managed to return Hearts to the top flight at the first time of asking.
Stendel had been linked with jobs in his homeland such as St Pauli, but is will now take the next step of his career in France, reports L’est Republican.
Nancy president Gaulthier Ganaye, who was formerly president at Barnsley, made Stendel his first choice to replace predecessor Louis Garcia, and missed the club’s final match of the season at Amiens in order to finalise the deal in Belgium.
It’s expected Stendel will put pen to paper in the coming days.
Gaulthier was at one time the youngest president in the English Football League whilst he was at Oakwell but left the Yorkshire outfit in 2019 to take up his current role with Nancy.
And Stendel enjoyed great success under the Frenchman, guiding the Tykes to automatic promotion to the Championship with an entertaining style of play.
That was what attracted Hearts, but despite trying to implement his own style on the squad, results didn’t happen quickly enough to keep Hearts off the bottom of the Premiership table before their campaign was cut short.
