In the holy place of FC Bayern
The barely noticed strength of Thomas Tuchel
By Tobias Nordmann
December 25, 2023, 7:40 a.m
FC Bayern’s year is turbulent. Only in the last few meters does the club manage to find its inner peace. This is due to a barely noticed strength of coach Thomas Tuchel – and joker Thomas Müller.
If Thomas Müller is doing well, then FC Bayern is doing well too. This rule still applies, even if another rule has long since been repealed. Namely the fact that Müller is always playing. It was once formulated by Louis van Gaal, the Dutch party beast. Van Gaal has long been history in Munich, Müller is still the present. And a little bit of the future. His contract was extended until 2025 shortly before Christmas. And that even though Müllerthomas is no longer the first choice, but just like “the Frauenkirche belongs to Munich,” as the soulful club boss Herbert Hainer made it known.
The fact that FC Bayern had a quiet Christmas, with confident victories against Manchester United, the Bundesliga surprise team VfB Stuttgart and VfL Wolfsburg, can hardly be better described by any player than the 34-year-old who loves to play more would accept his role without public complaints. Only occasionally does he hint that he would have liked to convince his coach more often to let him play from the start. This coach is called Thomas Tuchel and he is someone who is not at all driven by public debates. His path is his path, he ignores recommended turns. If he leaves the chosen path, then only out of inner conviction. He is only interested in the fact that he keeps setting small fires when the big fire engines arrive.
The cabin is closed again
In late summer the time had come and the bosses had had enough. They called Tuchel back; they had enough of the constant complaining about the squad being too thin. Even the once again powerful patron Uli Hoeneß had contacted Tegernsee and said that it wasn’t particularly clever. Otherwise they let Tuchel do his thing. And sang a hymn to him at every opportunity. He fought in very small steps to make the team more resilient and to balance it better. And he mostly did this without the powerful Müller.
When he even preferred Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, the Müller issue threatened to explode. Like former coach Niko Kovač, who saw the icon as just an emergency nail and stumbled over it. He moderated the role of the icon poorly and underestimated its power. Tuchel does it differently. He praises but promises nothing. So the emerging Thomas Müller wave remained a media wave. One that didn’t find a way to clap into the Munich fortress.
And Müller was also a big topic under Julian Nagelsmann, who was supposed to lead FC Bayern into a new era before he had to leave after almost two years, far too early (considering the shared goals). His relationship with the coach was considered strained, and the old striker also had to fight for a place under the young boss, more than was consistent with his self-image. In general, the music played far too loud off the pitch under Nagelsmann. There was the Larifari Leroy Sané, who probably didn’t take discipline that seriously. There was Serge Gnabry, who just flew to Paris for a fashion show. And there was the overshadowing Manuel Neuer case with all its consequences – including the dismissal of goalkeeping coach friend Toni Tapalovic and the angry interview.
Tuchel has cashed in on all these little trouble spots. Under his direction, the team has become very quiet. He obviously has the cabin under control. The dressing room that he loves so much, as he said after his first game in Munich. As he spoke, he designated it a sacred place, the protection of which he made his primary coaching duty. In all the turbulence, it is almost lost on the fact that the team has internalized their inner Tuchel. No complaining comes out, no complaining. The moles, who had diligently undermined Nagelsmann’s work, are also bumping their noses into Munich’s granite. Tuchel had promised Hoeneß in a personal conversation before he took office that he would take care of FC Bayern. He keeps his word.
Tuchel plucks the experts
Only the pro-Palestinian posts by the Moroccan Noussair Mazraoui caused a stir, more from outside than from within. However, it was a turbulent time in which nothing could be brought under control. Not for a coach. At FC Bayern he is in the storm from the start. With his complaints about the squad, with his formations and (non) substitutions. He caught everything in and out, didn’t let anything get into the locker room and rarely let anything get to his players. He allowed the wildly escalating and absurd expert dispute with Dietmar Hamann and Lothar Matthäus to escalate; the nation’s chief critics had accused FC Bayern under Tuchel of no longer being confident, no longer stable, and certainly no longer dominant.
Tuchel is foaming with anger, attacked the experts several times, acted condescendingly, rejected every offer of reconciliation – and dominated the headlines. It was no longer about the core of the matter, only about the manner. These diversionary maneuvers were otherwise only mastered by a really big player in Munich, the greatest of all in the club: Uli Hoeneß. Perhaps this is also why the trainer and the patriarch are connected on a level that allows them to live in purposeful coexistence as alpha animals.
The experts are not wrong
What Matthew and Hamann had emphasized again and again and more and more vehemently is by no means wrong. The cup embarrassment in Saarbrücken or the 5-1 defeat in Frankfurt were throwbacks to times on Säbener Straße that were long thought to be over. Other games were won due to individual class and not thanks to an outstanding and well-functioning collective. The Munich team, completely unsettled at the end of the Nagelsmann era and under the leadership of former bosses Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić, who were bizarrely dismissed, had lost themselves – and suddenly found themselves again on matchday 34, when the panicked BVB gave them the title from afar . On the pitch, the Munich team was an ensemble without structure, they lacked leadership and hierarchy. They weren’t there anymore either. Kahn and Salihamidžić had led the club into chaos in terms of communication. When it came to important topics, they ducked away or couldn’t find the right words.
The shaken alpha animals Hoeneß and Rummenigge took over from the summer and put together what their successors had destroyed. That took time. And economically a historic decision. With striker Harry Kane, the 100 million euro barrier was broken for the first time, although Hoeneß had ruled this out for a long time. But the courage paid off, the English national team captain saved FC Bayern numerous points with his 21 league goals so far and outshone many a performance that would have been difficult to forgive in Munich in other times.
Tuchel also needed time to bring together his ideas and the existing staff, which in his version does not provide a real six-man team. Kane scored, (sometimes also Mathys Tel), Sané shone, Jamal Musiala did magic, this big triad carried the Munich team through the first shaky weeks of the season, the construct around it only came together slowly. Without Müller, with a defense looking for sovereignty and a Joshua Kimmich who couldn’t always be who he wanted to be. FC Bayern is still far from being the omnivorous “Mia san mia” monster of the past decade; Christmas champions are Bayer 04 Leverkusen. But things are falling into place, thanks to Müller, because of Tuchel. He had promised Uli Hoeneß that.