An January 23, Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić, the new leaders of FC Bayern Munich, decided for the next time in Julian Nagelsmann, for the football coach, for whom they already set financial standards in the summer of 2021 (€25 million transfer fee, contract for five years) put.
It was quite a bold decision because it went against goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalović – and thus also against his closest confidant, Manuel Neuer, the captain of their team, who is unable to play this season due to injury. They sent Tapalović away because Nagelsmann wanted that. On the day they did what is rarely done in Munich: they didn’t side with the players, they side with the coach.
In the next few weeks, he and his team won the important Champions League games against Paris Saint-Germain – and yet the tiny hints that he apparently can no longer win in the most important place: in his own dressing room.
Tuchel follows Nagelsmann
On March 23, Kahn and Salihamidžić 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 the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky), when FC Bayern in the Bundesliga against Borussia Dortmund is expected to face the perhaps 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 deal with Nagelsmann on the one hand and Kahn and Salihamidžić on the other. 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 expected him and his tactical ideas to give them a competitive advantage in the competition with the investor clubs, 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.
