Rangnick “never won anything”
Lehmann complains about FC Bayern’s coaching candidate
April 24, 2024, 5:00 p.m
Jens Lehmann recently made headlines with his conviction for various misconduct, but now the ex-goalkeeper is speaking out about football again. He strongly advises FC Bayern against hiring Ralf Rangnick as their new coach – despite praise for the top candidate.
After the rejections of Xabi Alonso and Julian Nagelsmann, Ralf Rangnick is the new favorite for the coaching position at FC Bayern. However, ex-national player Jens Lehmann is skeptical about the current Austrian national coach. In an interview with RTL/ntv and sport.de, the 54-year-old replied to the question of whether Rangnick would fit in Munich: “I don’t think so.”
A few weeks ago, the experienced football teacher had committed himself to the ÖFB, but discussions are now underway about a move to FC Bayern after the European Championships in Germany. Rangnick even confirmed the contact – but also said that with the tournament approaching, he currently has no major ambitions to consider a change.
Lehmann doubts that Rangnick could meet the demands on Säbener Strasse. “He never won anything,” said the former Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund goalkeeper. And he even went further: “If someone has never won anything in the first 50 or 60 years of his life – what is the probability that he will win something afterwards? He has always had the opportunity to do something special somewhere, something to win.”
At the same time, Lehmann emphasized that he generally believes Rangnick is a capable coach. The native Swabian “certainly did well” at his stations in Leipzig and Hoffenheim, but also had “a lot of money” at his disposal.
Lehmann would like to work as a trainer again
According to Lehmann, Bayern’s search for a successor to Thomas Tuchel also depends on the details. “There are many coaches who do it quite well. But it’s a huge step between ‘quite good’ and ‘very good’,” warned the long-time national goalkeeper. An experience that several well-known trainers have had to make in recent years: Niko Kovač and Hansi Flick were just as unable to stay in office at FC Bayern as Nagelsmann and Tuchel were recently. “And now they’re getting Ralf Rangnick?” Lehmann asked, flabbergasted. In the same breath, he took the new sports director to task: “The challenge for Max Eberl now is to ask the right questions.”
The former national soccer goalkeeper recently emphasized that he wanted to work as a coach again. “Yes. I’ll probably do that again. It would be nice if it worked in the summer,” he said in an interview with “Münchner Merkur/TZ”. Lehmann was an assistant coach at Arsenal FC in the 2017/18 season and an assistant at FC Augsburg in the Bundesliga in 2019. Most recently he was on the supervisory board at Hertha BSC.
Lehmann was sentenced in December
In the recent past, the ex-footballer had made headlines away from the pitch: in December, he was sentenced by the Starnberg district court to pay 210 daily rates of 2,000 euros each (420,000 euros in total) for damage to property, insults and attempted fraud. The sum is based on estimates of his salary, which the 2006 World Cup goalkeeper only wanted to partially comment on.
According to Bayerischer Rundfunk, the charges related to various incidents. On the one hand, Lehmann was accused of breaking into a neighbor’s garage with a chainsaw in his hands and sawing a wooden beam there. He also drove out of a Munich parking garage “bumper to bumper” with another car to avoid the high parking fees and insulted police officers who wanted to revoke his driver’s license.
According to BR24, the judge’s guilty verdict stated that Lehmann had “consistently portrayed himself as a victim of the justice system” but was “not a victim, he is a perpetrator.” Lehmann’s lawyer, however, complained that “cannons were being shot at sparrows” during the trial.