At Bayern they knew that an early failure in the Champions League would result in a sharp judgment on this season. They wanted to avoid the end and the discussion at all costs. That didn’t work against FC Villarreal. Now three alpha animals are under pressure.
How is Uli Hoeneß doing this Wednesday? One does not know. And maybe you don’t want to know for sure. You definitely don’t want to be one of the people the retired club icon contacts this Wednesday to talk about what happened to FC Bayern, his FC Bayern, the night before in the Allianz Arena. The Munich were flown out of the Champions League in a dramatic way. Against FC Villarreal (0-1 in the first leg, 1-1 in the second leg). In the quarterfinals. Late, through a shot from striker Samu Chukwueze that would probably have landed significantly elsewhere if he’d hit the ball right. But that’s the way it is: FC Bayern only looks on when the European elite plays their football king. FC Bayern also only watches when the new DFB Cup winner is crowned in Berlin.
Uli Hoeneß doesn’t like that. You know that, although you don’t know how he’s doing this Wednesday, because Uli Hoeneß said a few years ago that one title per season isn’t enough for his club in the long run. At that time he was still the president, now he is retired and has become quite quiet. Is that good or bad? Well, at least it was often like this: If things didn’t go well at Bayern, Hoeneß unpacked one. He wasn’t always guided by the principle of fairness. Sometimes he tormented the media, sometimes some opponent. He delivered a headline, the public ate it and the team could concentrate on the essentials in the shadow of the debate or mock debate. The football. And in the record champions’ claim to success.
Now the team not only lacked exactly that on this Tuesday evening, the concentration on the essentials. Against the village or small town club, but at least seventh in the Spanish La Liga and reigning Europa League champion, the Munich team played committed, sometimes well, but the greed to crush this clever selection around their coach Unai Emery got it FC Bayern not on the lawn. For the second time in a row, the terminus is called “Quarterfinals”. For the second time in a row, the journey through Europe ends too early. If the knockout against Paris St. Germain last season could be mitigated by the fact that they failed in a rushing duel against a billion-dollar ensemble, it now takes a lot more imagination to explain that everything is not so bad. If you want to do that at all.
Three protagonists have to deliver
This bankruptcy may also lead to the club examining very carefully why this season will only end with one title, with the championship. Sure, it’s historical because it’s the tenth in a row, but it’s more of a placebo than a soothing balm for the severely painful wound that is obvious: that FC Bayern has lost its dominance. In Europe, but also nationally. Because the cup embarrassment (0:5) against Borussia Mönchengladbach is still buzzing through the Munich cosmos. Out in round two, as in the previous season, against the rebellious second division team Holstein Kiel. The resilience of the team is still sufficient to successfully assert itself in the bread-and-butter business (of the league). Also because pursuer Borussia Dortmund is still caught in the eternal loop between hope and despair. And because RB Leipzig had messed up the first phase of this season, it only really got going with coach Domenico Tedesco. Well, what if…
Finally, the mountain of your own piles up problems to be worked on. Where to start and where to stop? Three protagonists are now particularly challenged: Club boss Oliver Kahn, who (still) lacks the ability to achieve communication sovereignty in a Hoeneßian way, sometimes even to fight for it, sports director Hasan Salihamidžić, whose squad planning is now before all expert courts again is being negotiated and Julian Nagelsmann, who urgently needs to find solutions for bad moods in the squad and weaknesses in the form of top performers such as Thomas Müller and Leroy Sané. Nobody is allowed to look at their problems independently, because everything in Munich is connected to everything else in the Humboldtian sense.
There is of course the squad, which always becomes an issue when something bitterly big happens. If we were to talk about the fact that Munich aren’t in the same position as Manchester City or Liverpool FC, who have over 18 to 20 footballers (not just 13 to 15) at a very good level (with all the differences in quality), when they’re in the semi-finals would stand? Of course not, one would rather look admiringly. But that’s how the squad becomes a recurring Sams theme. But this time with different dimensions. Because it’s not just the width that’s being talked about, general questions are being raised as to whether FC Bayern really needs a big change. Are the footballers, spoiled by success, around the highly decorated Müller and Lewandowski really bilious enough? And can potential leaders like Dayot Upamecano and Lucas Hernández take on these roles?
What about Lewandowski and Haaland?
The most urgent problem is likely to be Robert Lewandowski. Rumors are being formulated around the Poles that hit FC Bayern hard. The Polish striker is said to want to leave the club in the summer. He should be surprised that the people of Munich do not want to talk to him about the future, which officially ends on June 30, 2023. Lewandowski is said to have clear demands (new two-year contract), the club has no answers. For whatever reason. Maybe because of Erling Haaland? The Norwegian force will most likely leave BVB this summer. Manchester City and Real Madrid are currently being cooked the hottest in the rumor mill. But FC Bayern is still steaming along.
Also such a problem. Kahn and Salihamidžić do not manage to finally clear the Haaland issue. Even the sporting director’s honest admission that he was having “a difficult phase financially” didn’t end the wild speculation. Not a good mix for Lewandowski, who had flirted with a change from time to time, but expressed his apparently great dissatisfaction very specifically this season. He rants on the pitch, he complains to his teammates after weak actions, he criticizes Nagelsmann’s tactics. Not the only one, Sport1 speaks of two “stink boots” in the cabin, but does not name any names. Needless to speculate. According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Nagelsmann should also talk less to the experienced staff than to a Joshua Kimmich, for example. Nobody knows better than Niko Kovac, Nagelsmann’s pre-predecessor, how fatal it can be if you neglect the club saints. First he lost “Notnagel” Müller, then the dressing room with his far too defensive tactics and finally his job. The situation in Munich is by no means so extreme. But relaxed is also different.
A sentence as a template for squad politics. Once again. Where to start and where to stop? Lewandowski is just a construction site. Manuel Neuer, Thomas Müller and Serge Gnabry also want to know how the club is planning for the long term. All of this has stressed the club in recent weeks. And at least Müller and Gnabry stole the form. They are also looking for Leroy Sané and Joshua Kimmich. At the most important time of the year, the most important players in the club are not in the condition it takes to win the big titles. In addition, there is Leon Goretzka, who is not back in steam hammer mode after a long injury, but is still one of the best at the moment. After his myocarditis, Alphonso Davies is not yet injured again. The unstoppable road runner and defense chief Niklas Süle, who leaves the club in the summer to try his luck at BVB, BVB of all places, is missing.
The squad has lost substance
Too much for FC Bayern because there aren’t enough alternatives to compensate for such a phase. Salihamidžić’s theme for this summer. For two years, the squad has become weaker, at least across the board. Options like in the treble season 2020, options like Ivan Perišić or Philippe Coutinho, they no longer exist. A replacement for the Thiago was never found either. And the departures of central defenders David Alaba and Jérôme Boateng hurt more than you ever wanted to admit. There really shouldn’t be another downgrade in order not to have to dwarf your own requirements. Another downgrade of the squad would make Nagelsmann’s work even more difficult and eventually make his grumbling louder or even louder. As with predecessor Hansi Flick, who painfully escalated the tough squad dissent with the sports director for the club, but lost the power struggle. And now national coach is.
The pressure on the coach is already increasing, even if there shouldn’t be any doubts about his work internally. The grumbling of leading players, the form weaknesses of top performers and currently no working concept for a dominant game idea (like Liverpool and Manchester City recently presented in the top game of the Premier League in a fascinating and so different way), these are things that are in his area be illuminated. In the game forward, the team has been acting for weeks without a clearly recognizable plan like Flick once did (at Nagelsmann it was different at the beginning of the season), defensively shaky and never stable. He is responsible for that.
That he was now so cleverly knocked out by the fox Emery as well. The individual class often helped when things got tight. That is no longer reliable. The man, for whom his stations at TSG Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig were always up front and up, now has to learn to lose as a favorite. How much he struggles with this was revealed in his criticism of SC Freiburg after the Breisgau protest against the Bundesliga game that FC Bayern played with twelve men for 18 seconds. However, Nagelsmann had the size to admit the mistake and apologize for it.
A AGM as a mirror image
Nagelsmann gave the lone fighter. As so often. Unlike Hoeneß or Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, club boss Kahn does not throw himself in front of his coach and bark angrily at the critics. The Titan wrestles for the sovereignty of communication. At the end of November last year he had completely lost it in a fatal way, at the annual general meeting. Among other things, it got wildly out of control on the subject of Qatar and sponsorship. President Herbert Hainer had to put up with “Hainer out” chants – and Kahn only responded two days later via Twitter. “Apparently some of the emotions didn’t reach me, which will be important to me in the future. It showed again how important the exchange between FC Bayern and our members is,” wrote Kahn. Hoeneß, the club saint, spoke in shock at the end of the “worst event I’ve ever experienced at Bayern.”
Now the season is actually over for Munich. The championship is just a formality and after this matchday it might be almost official. Should BVB lose at home against VfL Wolfsburg and FC Bayern win at Arminia Bielefeld, there would be twelve points between the two clubs and a goal difference of plus over 30 for Munich. Kahn is now focusing on that. “It just wasn’t supposed to be. Of course we were eliminated here in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. But we won’t burst into tears because of that,” said Kahn. “We have the opportunity again next year and we will attack again.”
Sentences that Uli Hoeneß would never have said.