Where is the old family?: FC Bayern is smashing its credibility

where is the old family
FC Bayern is shattering its credibility

By Tobias Nordman

FC Bayern was badly surprised and struggled for 20 hours for confirmation of the separation from coach Julian Nagelsmann. That doesn’t reflect well on the bosses of the record champions. The club is in danger of losing something important.

Does Uli Hoeneß know what Twitter is? He has probably already heard about it, but then didn’t bother with it any further. Three and a half years ago, the patriarch of FC Bayern admitted that he had never been on the internet. Well, the wheel of time has continued to turn, the record champions have had their fourth coach since this Friday and Hoeneß has perhaps turned a little more towards modern things. Why the thing with Hoeneß and Twitter is important: FC Bayern was terribly caught on the wrong foot by this medium on Thursday evening and it took over 20 hours to shake out of the shock and confirm what the world already knew: Julian Nagelsmann must go, Thomas Tuchel can come.

What must have happened to Uli Hoeneß in the past few days? What did he wonder about the most? About this Twitter and this transfer market guru Fabrizio Romano, who daringly claimed on Thursday evening that Nagelsmann would be fired soon – and was he right? Or how FC Bayern dealt with the “leak”? Where the “leak” came from should concern the club the most, because it caused massive damage. Above all, club boss Oliver Kahn and sports director Hasan Salihamidžić. Because they are now somewhat embarrassed. The fact that Coach Nagelsmann found out from the media about his (at that time) completely surprising resignation (so it is reported) is a cracking slap for the management.

The bosses got scared and worried

Even 20 hours after the quake, this leadership was still struggling to find the right way to deal with it and did not get any applause for it. The bosses retreated behind the sporting argument, only partially caught in the web of the curious. Not everyone wanted to understand that you fire a coach who has won every game in the Champions League, who is still in the DFB Cup and is “only” second in the league, but still has all the trumps in his hands, to enter the eleventh championship under their own steam. Played too unattractively, rarely tapped into potential, too great fluctuations in performance, those were the arguments. Of course, after big tournaments, national players always fell into a hole. Because the World Cup usually took place in the summer, exhaustion never affected the decisive phase of the season.

This year it’s just different. Qatar is to blame. And so the people of Munich are not relaxed about the fact that things are not going well on the field, they panic desperately. With a view to the duels against BVB, twice against the strong SC Freiburg (in league and cup) and the giants Manchester City (Champions League), the bosses were apparently afraid that this season could end in disaster, i.e. without a title. Nothing drives this club more than the fear of being left behind. Especially internationally. Salihamidžić recently revealed how much this concern consumes after the 2-1 defeat in the Bundesliga, which Nagelsmann apparently fell in the end. “I’ve rarely experienced so little drive, so little mentality, so little duel, so little assertiveness. This team is so good when it has a mentality from the start and gives 100 percent,” he said. “And she’s not as good when she’s playing like she is today. When she’s lazy and thinks that she can do everything with the quality of play. She just can’t.”

FC Bayern is fighting doggedly to assert its family-sanctified business model in a duel with the ice-cold and soulless investor giants. And in this fight, the people of Munich are losing more and more of what they actually want to keep: the legendary and unspecified “Mia san mia”, which the old alphas Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had made the top club mantra . In its manifestation, this meant for decades: Whoever attacks FC Bayern has to get past Hoeneß and Rummenigge, two mighty knights. They threw themselves in front of the club with everything they had. They lit smoke candles, they launched counterattacks. They fed the team and the coach, if necessary out of focus, and put themselves in the storm.

Matthew misses the “Mia san mia”

Your successors will not succeed. President Herbert Hainer often remains pale in the background. Oliver Kahn, who was always able to explode as a titan on the pitch, has become a self-controlled business man. He’s too often quiet, too rarely present when there’s a bang. You can be sure that there would not have been a 20-hour hesitation after the Nagelsmann “leak” (at that time it would have been called disclosure) under Hoeneß and Rummenigge. And sports director Hasan Salihamidžić is not (yet) the unassailable knight. And so in the past few months, actually throughout Nagelsmann’s entire era, attacks have repeatedly crashed into the Säbener Straße fortress, into the heart of the club. Because he didn’t want to accept that, Hoeneß took his old armor out of the closet at Tegernsee and repeatedly swung himself up to the defense attorney.

Also because the leadership was rumoring and massively lost credibility. Hainer announced on Monday, three days before Nagelsmann’s (media) dismissal, that there was no discussion about Nagelsmann at FC Bayern, that long-term plans were being made with him, that he would fit “incredibly well”. Completely different from the image of the bosses. Offensively expressed support, tough confessions and then the bang. How can that be? At least bad communication, at worst an unsuspecting president. And Kahn and Salihamidžić, they absolutely have to hope that their plan with Tuchel will work out. The duo has sunk too many millions in recent years. 1a solution Nagelsmann, whom they trusted blindly, whom they fulfilled all wishes (from players to training ground redesigns to the separation of assistant coaches) has become a gigantic, expensive flop. The “world-class” players Sadio Mané and Joao Cancelo have only been expensive and not successful so far. These three personal details are only the tip of the million dollar loss.

Too many crises had broken out around the record champions. Crisis management was not successful enough. From the “Manuel Neuer” case to the “Toni Tapalovic case” to Nagelsmann’s outburst of anger and the search for the mole that had dangerously undermined the cabin. The bosses fought for sovereignty and sought it in defense speeches for the coach they have now pushed out of office. In doing so, they did not leave the impression of a convinced path. The cult expert Lothar Matthäus, who was recently not very welcome in Munich (especially by Hoeneß), confessed to RTL/ntv that it was “no longer the ‘Mia san mia’ that Bayern always distinguished at the time of Rummenigge and Hoeneß.” One must, demanded Matthew, “back to the roots, to family interactions”. That “made Bayern strong in the past,” he said, “I’ve missed that in the last year or a year and a half.” Now comes Tuchel, now the weeks are coming that will decide everything. Also about the work of Salihamidžić and Kahn.

source site-33