Just two months ago, somewhere in the middle of March, in Bayern Munich everything was as it usually is at the beginning of spring. The Bundesliga record holder was still in contention to win the title in all three competitions.
In the Champions League, the Bavarians won one after another and advanced to the quarterfinals in an impressive manner. In the German Cup as well. The only problem was in the Bundesliga.
In the domestic championship, Bayern did not dominate in the way it was in the past years. Before the then derby with Borussia Dortmund, Bayern was defeated on the road in Leverkusen. The Bundesliga series champion fell to second place. Behind Dortmund. The Bayern fans were uncomfortable looking at the league table. They are not used to such a thing.
But they also had to admit that the performances of the Munich club on the Bundesliga lawns were not at all in line with the club's ambitions. At that moment, after the defeat against Bayer Leverkusen, some things apparently coincided: the coach that the Bayern bosses had wanted to see on the bench of the club for some time, Thomas Tuchel, was free on the market after being sacked by the Chelsea. And so the bosses of Bayern, and above all the head of management Oliver Kan and sports director Hasan Salihamidžić, quite surprisingly decided to terminate cooperation with Julijan Nagelsman and to hire Tuhel.
The rest of the story is well known. Bayern was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Champions League by Manchester City. Bayern were relegated in the quarter-finals of the German Cup by Freiburg. But, at least in the meeting with a direct competitor for the title of Bundesliga champion, the new coach Tuchel recorded a victory (4:2) - thanks to which the Bavarians returned to the top of the table.
A season without a title?
However, it seems that this season could end without winning the title for Bayern. Ahead of the last round of the Bundesliga, Borussia Dortmund has a match ball. Namely, after the Munich club suffered a heavy defeat against Leipzig (1:3) in the last round at home, in front of their shocked audience, Borussia overtook the Bavarians with a victory away to Augsburg (3:0) and are now at the very end of the season. enters as a leader.
How could this happen to Bayern, a club that has won the German championship serially in the last decade? Coach Tuhel, an experienced sports teacher, himself admits that he has no idea what is going on. The frustrated coach even said he "feels a bit powerless". In addition, he listed numerous mistakes made by his team, so he announced that he will literally overturn every stone in the club in order to eliminate Bayern's weaknesses.
The uncertain future of the Kan-Salihamidžić duet
That won't be enough. For weeks now, the public has been shifting the responsibility for the current situation to club boss Oliver Kahn. The sports director Salihamidžić is also increasingly under pressure, and lately sentences like this have been coming out of his mouth: "These are deep problems, but I can't say what our problem is". To this day, he emphasizes that it was the right decision to change the coach in the middle of the season, that it simply had to be that way. And he adds that Bayern's performances at that time were not the kind that usually adorn the champion of Germany.
It seems that there were indeed some problems between coach Nagelsman and some of the players. The young coach failed to correct Bayern's mistakes from the previous season - in which the Bundesliga title was still won. He didn't even succeed in achieving the Bavarian club's goal of Bayern dominating the way he did when Jupp Heynckes was sitting on the coaching bench. Or Pep Guardiola.
At the end of the season, even Tuhel did not manage to do that. His image has also been damaged - the image of a successful coach who won the title of European club champion with Chelsea two years ago. And Tuchel indicates that he would have preferred to have taken over the team only in the summer, before the new season.
What is the role of Uli Henes?
What will happen if Bayern ends the season without winning at least one title? What consequences can be expected? And if there are, who will bear them? One thing is certain: unrest reigns in the club headquarters in Munich. Former president Uli Hennes and former head of the Management Karl-Heinz Rumenige did not even try to hide their dismay at the last performances of the teams in the stands. They sat with literally petrified faces. Honorary President Hennes, whom Bayern considers no less than his life's work, does not have the authority to make decisions, but he is still a member of the Supervisory Board. And that body is the most powerful control instance in the club.
Eight men sit in the Supervisory Board. Among them is former Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stojber, there are also representatives of the (co)owners of Bayern, so they are mostly top managers from the world of business. Hennes's opinion has considerable weight here, it is very likely that what he says has even more weight than what the current president of the club and the chairman of the Supervisory Board, Herbert Heiner, say.
And the leading duet Kan-Salihamidžić must report to the Supervisory Board, i.e. explain to its members what happened this season, what is their responsibility for the series of sports failures. The next session of the Supervisory Board was actually planned for Monday, May 22. It has been a tradition for 20 years that the Supervisory Board meets on Mondays before the last championship round, as Heiner explained, because after the end of the season "everyone goes to the annual".
But, judging by the club's announcement, this time the session is scheduled for next Tuesday, May 30, so after the last round. Regardless of how the first league season ends for Bayern, it can be expected that the session for Kan and Salihamidzic will not be a pleasant chat.
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