FC Bayern Munich is not only vulnerable on the pitch these days. So it’s almost no wonder that Uli Hoeneß, of all people, served in the “Attack” department again last week. Because slowly it is becoming clear: FC Bayern is not that far in terms of personnel at the management level.
For many years now, the vulnerability of the great FC Bayern Munich has been felt again. Because the record champions are not only lacking in sport, Bayern are also extremely fragile off the green pitch. The long-time manager and president of the club, Uli Hoeneß, must have sensed that when he worked in the “attack” department last week, which hasn’t existed since he left FC Bayern’s “lightning rod”. Because Uli Hoeneß’s verbal sweepstakes were always a tried and tested means of taking the pressure off the team and opening up side scenes that distracted media interest from the club’s actual problems and weaknesses.
Hoeneß, who has been out of office at Bayern since 2019, will have noticed that it was precisely these clear words that the club from Säbener Straße had been missing recently. It’s no coincidence that he himself said at the “Neue Presse” talk show in Hanover last week: “There was a new start at FC Bayern two years ago with Oliver Kahn and Herbert Hainer. That’s why Watzke now has a small lead.”
Hoeneß referred these sentences primarily to the influence of Munich on German football, but his interlude – “But as always in life, Dortmund is second again afterwards” – shows that he was also concerned with the direct sporting effects. FC Bayern these days lack the personalities who stabilize the lurching club internally and externally. This development was foreseeable – but how to fill this vacuum is still not clear.
Uli Hoeneß has experienced such a time himself. At the beginning of the 1990s, after a phenomenal decade under manager Hoeneß, who had been in charge since 1979, FC Bayern found themselves in a difficult situation. The internal relationship between President Scherer and manager Hoeneß was not right and created problems that shook the club properly. The solution: The Bavarians put the two vice-presidents Franz Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge at the side of Uli Hoeneß. At the time, the media doubted whether this “wave of nostalgia” would bring the crisis-ridden club back into shape, but in the long term this “nonsense” (quote from the then BVB manager Michael Meier) should prove itself. The troika of the three old stars of FC Bayern all contributed in their own way to the return to the road to success and the subsequent impressive further ascent to unimagined heights.
For a variety of reasons, the last few weeks have suggested that the record champions must be careful not to be thrown completely off track in this current personnel list. At the moment, the individual construction sites may still be manageable at first glance, but if they are eliminated in the Champions League against Paris Saint-Germain at home in the arena on March 8th, FC Bayern will quickly become a powder keg. And it is precisely at this moment that it will become clear whether the managers actually have what it takes to steer the club even in difficult times.
In view of the developments of the last few weeks and months, however, one may have doubts as to whether Herbert Hainer, Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidži? already have the necessary skills to keep the club stable and up in the usual way. Because as the example with the then new vice-presidents Beckenbauer and Rummenigge from 1991 shows: Sometimes radial upheavals and solutions are necessary to keep a club on the road to success in the long term. After all, there is one thing Bayern should never rely on: their heyday can finally come!
