Julian Nagelsmann could no longer win at Bayern Munich
AOn January 23, Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić, the new leaders of the FC Bayern Munichnext time decided for Julian Nagelsmann, for the football coach for whom she financial benchmarks as early as summer 2021 (€25 million transfer fee, five-year contract).
It was quite a bold decision because she against goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalović – and thus also against his closest confidant, Manuel Neuer, the captain of their team, who this season unable to play due to injury. They sent Tapalović away because Nagelsmann wanted that. They did what you put in on the day Munich rarely does: They did not side with the players, but with the coach.
In the next few weeks he won with his team in the important Champions League games against Paris Saint-Germain – and yet the tiny hints accumulated that he apparently can no longer win in the most important place: in his own dressing room.
Tuchel follows Nagelsmann
On March 23rd they met Kahn and Salihamidžić now decided against Nagelsmann. They did what is usually done in Munich: They no longer side with the coach, but with the players.
And if you look at the board of directors of the largest German sports club, which has always been a player’s club believing just a little bit of what they’ve been saying since that summer of 2021, they’ve now decided against doing it their own way too.
On April 1 (6:30 p.m. in FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and at Sky), where FC Bayern in the Bundesliga against Borussia Dortmund may be expected to face the decisive duel for the championship, Julian Nagelsmann will no longer be on the sidelines. He will be replaced there by Thomas Tuchel. But before that you should get in touch with Nagelsmann on the one hand and with barge and Salihamidžić deal with it. With the trainer, who was very much the center of attention (and probably also: wanted to be). And with the boards that made him very much the center of attention.
It’s true that Julian Nagelsmann liked to do foreign policy in his constant mandatory press conferences, for FC Bayern – and for himself (but not always for his players, a recent example: Serge Gnabry and the discussion about Fashion Week). But it is also true that he had to do foreign policy because Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić avoided political debates (Corona, vaccination, Qatar). You have to blame them: They didn’t protect their coach when they should have protected him. And be it in front of yourself.
Now they could no longer protect him. They fired the man, who was worth a hell of a lot of money to them, because they got rid of him and his tactical ideas a competitive advantage in the competition with the investor clubs promised, probably as a consequence. You can’t blame them for that: whoever loses the dressing room in Munich can no longer win. And yet their next decisions will be under special scrutiny. Julian Nagelsmann, 35 years old, is not the first coach in the Bayern biotope to fail. But with him is her first coach failed.
