The rumor has been going on for months, now FC Bayern is making it official. The new sports director of the record champions is Max Eberl. The 50-year-old will take up his post on March 1st and faces enormous tasks. He has to find a new coach and initiate a huge change.
Max Eberl is the new sports director at FC Bayern Munich. Around six months after his release from RB Leipzig, the 50-year-old takes over the German football record champions. The original Bavarian is supposed to lead the club out of a crisis of meaning and usher in probably the biggest upheaval in the club’s recent history. Because the situation at FC Bayern is in disarray despite the last-minute win against RB Leipzig last Saturday (2-1).
The Championship? Almost lost! The trainer? Must go at the end of the season! The DFB Cup? Embarrassment in Saarbrücken! The path to the final in the premier class? At least rocky! The club legends Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge? On the retreat. After turbulent weeks on Säbener Straße, everything is once again being put to the test. There is a huge mountain of work ahead of the new sports director Max Eberl, which will not be removed with a successful search for a coach for the coming season.
“I spent my entire childhood and youth at FC Bayern and in Munich, so it is something special for me to now return to the club where it all began in a new role,” said Eberl: “The job as sports director is a big challenge that I will tackle with a lot of respect and humility, but with even more anticipation.”
One of his first tasks will be to find a successor for Thomas Tuchel, who is leaving at the end of the season. Many names are associated with the record champions, including the former Bayern coach and current DFB coach Julian Nagelsmann. He could imagine returning after the European Championships, according to the tabloids these days. But the future master coach Xabi Alonso and Zinédine Zidane are also being discussed. Whoever it is, FC Bayern is hoping for a long-term solution after too many changes in the coaching chair since the departure of Pep Guardiola in the summer of 2016.
Up to twelve players could leave the club
“We want more continuity in the coaching chair. That’s what we’re striving for,” CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen said at the weekend and also hinted at the upcoming squad shake-up. President Herbert Hainer seconded him: “We have to sit down at the end of the season and analyze what’s going on. Why aren’t we playing so well? Is it just the coach or do we have to change something in the team too?”
The specialist magazine “Kicker” gave the announced analysis the adjective “merciless” and added that “even the big names don’t stop”. It will now be up to Eberl to make the difficult transition with possibly deep cuts in the squad, which will lose two absolute key players from the 2010s and early 2020s in the coming years: veterans Manuel Neuer and Thomas Müller.
Alphonso Davies, among others, could leave the club as early as this summer. The Canadian left-back was the shooting star of the 2019/2020 season and was a prime example of good scouting for a long time. Recently, however, the now 23-year-old has stagnated. He has been linked with a move to Real Madrid a year before his contract ends in the summer of 2025.
In addition to Davies, national players such as Leroy Sané, Serge Gnabry or Leon Goretzka could also be affected. “At least five players, independent of Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and Bouna Sarr, are to be given up. The future of a total of twelve players is being discussed, further departures are by no means ruled out,” writes the “Kicker”. The future of Joshua Kimmich, the former future captain of FC Bayern, is still uncertain. The trade magazine also reports on restructuring in the management team. Sports director Christoph Freund, who was only hired in the summer, will be more “involved in youth work and the transition to the professionals” in the future.
“Lack of commitment” in Leipzig
The former Bayern amateur Eberl, who played for Bayern for around 15 years before becoming a successful Bundesliga player at other clubs, was always considered a candidate for a job at FC during his time as sports director at Borussia Mönchengladbach Bavaria. After his surprising, health-related withdrawal from the Lower Rhine in January 2022 and his subsequent move to RB Leipzig as Managing Director of Sports in December 2022, the move to Munich seemed to have been completed for the time being.
After his time with the Bayern amateurs, Max Eberl (l.) moved to VfL Bochum. His opponent at the time, Alexander Zickler (r.), is currently assistant coach at RB Leipzig, Ebel’s last stop. The football world is small.
(Photo: picture alliance / augenklick/firo Sportphoto)
After less than a year, however, RB Leipzig parted ways with Eberl, who had avoided a clear answer internally and externally to the rumors that kept popping up about a move to FC Bayern. The Saxons had accused Eberl of a “lack of commitment” during the separation. Since his exit from Leipzig, just hours before a league game against FC Bayern, the rumors had intensified and had virtually become a certainty.
Eberl succeeds Hasan Salihamidžić. He had to leave his position as sports director in the turbulent final phase of last season. The Bosnian was sports director from July 1, 2017 until the summer of 2020 and was then promoted. His time ended with the final whistle of the 2022/2023 season. When FC Bayern celebrated their surprising championship in Cologne, Salihamidžić found out about his exit.
“I accept that, of course. I would have liked to have continued because I really wanted to win the Champions League again with this team. I am proud to have worked for FC Bayern for almost six years in sporting responsibility,” Salihamidžić said and emphasized at the time that he still wanted to remain a friend of FC Bayern.
Hoeneß and Rummenigge want to withdraw
The situation at FC Bayern in the early summer of 2023 was so dramatic that even the long-time leading figures Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeneß pushed back into day-to-day business in order to put the giant that had lost its way back into “calm waters”, Honorary President Hoeneß had already said in the said last year. With Eberl’s commitment, this should now be achieved. Hoeneß announced in autumn 2023 that the two club icons want to withdraw again and will continue to “benevolently advise” the club, but will no longer be present all the time.
Hoeneß and Rummenigge had embarked on their rescue mission after the FC Bayern squad had increasingly lost identity and quality in the years under Salihamidžić, while high transfer fees and immense salaries also put a financial strain on the club. Under pressure from the top international clubs and due to the club’s own self-image of not being a seller’s club, the squad width had, above all, been extremely reduced due to ever-increasing personnel costs. The current coach, Tuchel, had already criticized the squad’s lack of breadth last summer and briefly clashed with Hoeneß over it.
In May 2023, Salihamidžić and CEO Oliver Kahn were also accused of the premature and hasty separation from Julian Nagelsmann. The current national coach had to pack his things in March 2023. Nagelsmann had accused the two of them in “Spiegel” last week of breach of trust and criticized the lack of perseverance on the part of the management at the time. “The coaches at Bayern Munich don’t get that much time to develop something,” he said.
The goal is clear: final at home!
Nagelsmann’s successor Thomas Tuchel is already sitting on his suitcases packed and will leave the record champions by the end of the season at the latest. Even though the circumstances of the separation remain silent, everything points to a break between the current Bayern coach and the management team.
It is now up to Eberl to set the course for a successful future for FC Bayern. The club’s big goal has been formulated for a long time: Bayern want to be in the final of the Champions League at the end of the 2024/2025 season. This will be held in Munich for the first time since 2012. At that time, FCB had dramatically lost the “final at home” against Chelsea. Since then they have been in the final twice – in 2013 against Borussia Dortmund and in 2020 against Paris Saint-Germain. Bayern won both finals.
But recently the record champions had weakened in the premier class. In three consecutive seasons, Bayern finished in the quarter-finals, not always against the absolute top class in Europe. The Munich team were completely unexpectedly eliminated in 2021/2022 against the Spanish representative Villarreal. This season, the first leg of the round of 16 was lost 0-1 at Lazio. Bayern are still favorites in the second leg next week. If they don’t make it through the round, Eberl could possibly be forced to look for an interim coach until the summer.