Bayern and Julian Nagelsmann just can’t get any rest: the search for the sneaky mole continues. But the chances of finding the internal spy are not very good. Ansgar Brinkmann and his teammates used to be luckier.
“We once had a mole on the team who drove the elevator after his betrayal. He was chained to a chair, half-naked, had Nutella and jam on his face and rode up and down the hotel elevator until the kit man released him.” Ex-pro Ansgar Brinkmann is of course a man of honour, so even today you will not find out from him who was the poor “mole” in his team back then. But during his long career, the “white Brazilian” knew exactly what happens to teammates who “constantly give out some shit”.
In any case, during his time at VfL Osnabrück, they were also not very forgiving when a mole flew up: “Then it can also happen that he slips and falls against a locker. The mole finally got to know Jacek Janiak better. Against Jacek Janiak, Thorsten Legat is a boy from the church choir! If you are locked in the dressing room with Jacek Janiak, it’s like the one in the thunder dome: two go in, one comes out.”
That sounds anything but nice, but anyone who witnessed Julian Nagelsmann at the press conference on the current mole at FC Bayern Munich can understand how much this internal breach of trust tests emotional boundaries. The cabin as a place of protection and retreat is sacred to athletes – and is only deliberately opened from time to time for film recordings and views from the outside.
“What is said in a booth stays in the booth”
Ansgar Brinkmann, who has seen and experienced a lot in his career, has a clear opinion on the subject in his book “If I were you, I’d rather be me”, just like the coach of the record champions: “What is said in a dressing room, that stays in the dressing room, that’s an unwritten law in football. Nothing and no one has access, nothing at all. And if a team member reveals internal information from the dressing room, it’s often handled very unconventionally internally.”
Today’s football expert Brinkmann said these sentences back in 2016, when someone at FC Bayern under coach Pep Guardiola provided the press with sensitive information from the FC Bayern dressing room and the players’ email accounts. Among other things, the media learned from this secret source that Guardiola is said to have sent his player Jérôme Boateng onto the pitch, although he knew that Boateng was ailing. When Boateng then injured himself even more seriously, the excitement was of course correspondingly high.
Just like back then with Pep Guardiola and unlike Ansgar Brinkmann’s cases, there is currently a problem for Bayern: the person who passed on the internal information has not yet been found. And so Nagelsmann says quite rightly: “If we don’t find this mole, there can be no consequences.” But when it comes to the coach of FC Bayern Munich, someone else is the focus of criticism: the media. Nagelsmann is irritated by the reporting by “Sport Bild”: “For me, this is completely the wrong way and has nothing to do with sports journalism.” And Ansgar Brinkmann understandably has a clear opinion on this subject: “You have to tell the press: ‘There’s a stop sign in front of the cabin, you’re allowed to go this far, but not one step further.'”
Was it Lothar?
But of course there are always two sides to the story. The one who pushes through the information and the other who likes to use this internal information. When Dieter Hoeneß started at Hertha in Berlin, to his great astonishment, the press was always well informed about all the steps taken by the old lady. No wonder, as it turned out shortly afterwards: there wasn’t a single mole sitting in the presidium, no, the entire team was more like a lawn with lots of molehills. Finally, Hertha manager Dieter Hoeneß was very worried about the members of his club during the meetings: “Every few minutes they had to get out. Bladder weakness? Do I have to recommend a good doctor? Until I found out that these gentlemen from the toilet of the office with Journalists were on the phone.”
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At the time, Dieter Hoeneß probably got a few valuable tips from his brother Uli on how to deal with moles, because how an undetected internal spy can bring a team to the brink of collapse was something the then Bayern manager had to see his team up close in 1997 experience. In mid-March, before a home game against FC Schalke 04, there was a legendary conversation that Lothar Matthäus recorded in his “Diary”, which was published shortly afterwards.
At the time, Jürgen Klinsmann said to the record national player: “Lothar, you are to blame for everything. You pass on all the internals to your buddies, these journalists.” Matthew later said he was “nailed to the wall” by his colleagues. After Franz Beckenbauer had rumbled what a “shitty team” the team was, Uli Hoeneß then stood behind Matthäus and said: “You’re on the wrong steamer. It wasn’t Lothar!” To this day, it has actually never been fully clarified who was the informant of the press at that time. However, Matthäus published the “diary” together with a chief reporter from the “Bild” newspaper and the deputy sports director of the pay-TV broadcaster “Premiere”.
Middendorp was also affected
By the way: The mole does not always have to be from our own ranks. When Bielefeld coach Ernst Middendorp saw a conspicuous man with a low-slung baseball cap, a camera in his left hand and the “Kicker” special in his right hand on the training ground shortly before the start of the 2007 season, the Arminia coach confronted the visibly disturbed person and asked him: “Do you have everything you need? Otherwise I’ll write it down for you!” Middendorp then sent greetings to the coach of the first opponent of the season, Felix Magath from VfL Wolfsburg, and then said goodbye to the dumbfounded man from the Arminia training ground.
It is currently not known whether Bayern will find their mole. The chances are probably not too high. But if the leak is actually found, it will be interesting to see how Julian Nagelsmann will react. However, his emotional words on the subject in recent days suggest little mercy. One can only hope that Ansgar Brinkmann and his teammates will not set an example when it comes to punishment methods.