In the power struggle at FC Bayern, everything focuses on the question of whether Hansi Flick will remain coach in Munich. A departure of his “opponent” Hasan Salihamidžić, on the other hand, seems impossible. Despite always unfair lobbying against him.
Surveys are always welcome. The more arousal the topic has, the harder the click counter rattles. FC Bayern has a lot of excitement potential. And always anyway. In these days, however, again significantly more than in quieter times. At the moment, however, only people who still know who Jupp Heynckes is can remember them.
Jupp Heynckes – a little explanation for everyone who doesn’t know who that is – was the coach of FC Bayern four times. And he made it to “Saint Joseph”. For the first triple coach in club history. To the savior after a misleading episode with the cozy Carlo Ancelotti. Yes, the quieter times were a while ago.
Well, the potential for excitement these days is so high because a power struggle is raging in Munich between coach Hansi Flick and sports director Hasan Salihamidžić, in which the roles seem to be fairly clearly distributed: Hansi Flick, the good guy. Hasan Salihamidžić, the other. It’s not that good. That can be easily poured into a survey. You don’t have to ask directly who is stupid and who is not. In order to get a result in this direction, it is enough to ask who is more dispensable for FC Bayern: Flick or Salihamidžić. And that’s how it’s done. The percentages vary depending on the client, but the mood is clear: Flick is indispensable. Salihamidžić does not. The approval reached values as in presidential elections in dictatorships.
Don’t get it wrong: Hansi Flick can’t help it. He is completely unsuspected of manipulation. But not the election campaign. For his concern. That is the quality of the team. And this season, the season after the second triple in the club’s history, it is no longer as high as it was in the previous season. Flick said exactly that. It is a sentence that only knows one sender in its clarity: Hasan Salihamidžić.
Success is also due to his transfers
All attempts to recapture and reinterpret the sentence subsequently failed. Got stuck: The sports director did not give the coach what he wanted. Once again. The dispute began in winter 2020 when Flick was still an interim coach and is still waiting for a stable peace. The last one announced was canceled faster than left-back Alphonso Davies can sprint. And the connoisseur knows: This Davies is really incredibly fast.
He was canceled by Flick. Against the warning from club boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, whose role in this power struggle is just as unclear as that of his future successor Oliver Kahn. Flick had terminated the peace with one sentence that destroyed everything, that actually made a common future for the two of them completely impossible. It was a sentence about “acting” by the coach as a comment on transfer decisions. While Flick repeatedly complained in public, Salihamidžić has been silent on this conflict for weeks. But how is it that he somehow ended up in the role of the “bad boy” at Bayern? Is that fair Well, maybe because he refuses to make a clear commitment to the future of the successful and popular coach? What the coach is doing publicly to the club.
The work of the sports board is viewed very critically in public. The most succinct reading is this: Although he makes the transfers, the club is successful. This is of course nonsense. It is forgotten that he was actively involved in signing Leon Goretzka and Benjamin Pavard. Goretzka is undisputedly a mega transfer. Pavard a very good one. The transfers of Lucas Hernández and Alphonso Davies are attributed solely to Salihamidžić.
Hernández keeps suggesting why he could be a coup. The highest expectations weigh on him because of the highest transfer fee in the club’s history. He could not (yet) meet them because of the recurring injuries. Quite different from Davies, who massively enraptured the football world, especially last season. Philippe Coutinho and Ivan Perišić also go through “sensible transfers”.
Too few options for a real evaluation
The allegation of a weak management policy stems more from the past three transfer phases. So from the phases in which Flick was a trainer. There the record reads really rather poor: Right-back Álvaro Odriozola played no role and is gone again. Goalkeeper Alexander Nübel ensures more theater than good performances (but he hardly gets any chances). King transfer Leroy Sané is establishing himself more and more, but is not yet the difference player he should be.
Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting is the backup of Robert Lewandowski and fulfills the role solidly. Marc Roca has potential, but no stakes. Bouna Sarr and Douglas Costa are big disappointments, but hardly got any chances either. The talents Tanguy Nianzou (almost always injured) and Tiago Dantas (Flick’s dream player) cannot be judged. They rarely or never play.
All in all, it actually sounds like this: Flick has to manage a quality defect. Which he does very sensibly despite the cup embarrassment against Holstein Kiel and Champions League knockout against Paris St. Germain. But is it really that simple? Can a squad policy be torn apart like this if the players cannot prove themselves? Would be a topic for a survey. Well, actually not. Much too superficial, much too tendentious.
Flick refuses to interfere
The problem of Salihamidžić’s “role” is rather the conflict of competence. And that’s where it gets really complicated. At FC Bayern it has been the case for ages that it was not the coach who made the decision, but the bosses around Uli Hoeneß (advocate and mentor of Salihamidžić). They built the roster. A policy that brought the club title after title. National. International. So who can doubt that this approach is wrong? But one could question whether it is still up-to-date. The game is becoming more and more complex, the profiles of the required players more and more special.
A coach who wants to assert his game also needs “his players”. So an argument for more power. More power for Flick. But it is also like this: The trainer, in this case Flick, claims sovereignty over the team’s sporting interests. In the discussion about missions for substitute keeper Nübel, he forbade any interference. Also from Salihamidžić.
The cases of David Alaba and Jérôme Boateng show how insoluble this dilemma seems. The two top performers and confidants of the coach are let go by Salihamidžić. There are good arguments for this, absolutely clear. The strongest: financial sanity in times of pandemics. But there are also very good arguments against it. The strongest: The coach’s wish to continue to rely on the qualities of the defensive players. The loss shows how the weights are.
Especially in the Boateng case, where the decision-making process is said to have actually been a tough solo effort. Internally, this is said to have been rated critically. And not for the first time either. However, there was no publicly expressed criticism. Hasan the strong. Hansi, the beaten. That he talked his feelings off his soul for minutes after the premier class knockout, that he was preparing his departure from Munich, that Salihamidžić had not reacted so far, it looked like a cold victory for the sports director.
The fact that Niko Kovač, the ex-coach of FC Bayern and also a very bitter opponent of Salihamidžić, added wordy and criticized the Bosnian’s decision-making absolutism, it manifests the role of the still silent board. This is often a smart way to go. But not these days. It works hard. It looks cool. It seems uncompromising. It just doesn’t look like the good guy in this movie.
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