When Hansi Flick and Julian Nagelsmann dueled for the first time as professional coaches, there was no winner. The game that FC Bayern (Flick) and RB Leipzig (Nagelsmann) played in February 2020 should have gone down as one of the most undecided draws in Bundesliga history. This game simply couldn’t decide between the two teams and ended 0-0 just to be on the safe side.
The reviews later read at least as undecided as the result. Neither coach had lost the game, but neither could a winner be determined, not even one felt more. What criteria should such a victory have been measured by? At that point in time nobody knew what kind of a coach this patch was: Was he still a novice head coach after just three months at Bayern-Bank, although he was almost 55? Or was he the full professional with decades of experience who was blown away by Maradona as a Bayern player and would definitely not let himself be tricked by a cheeky talented coach like this Nagelsmann?
Back then, Flick was both a veteran and a rookie, and now, less than two years later, he is the German national coach. And Nagelsmann is no longer even remotely suspected of being a cheeky talented coach. Although still only 34, he is the undisputed head coach at Bayern.
Without knowing it, the undecided Bundesliga match in February 2020 brought together those two men who are now important. Now that Flick has published his last international squad in 2021, it is even more noticeable how much German football is about to become a case for two.
It’s like in the automotive industry: In addition to well-tried knowledge, there are the ideas of the modern generation of engineers
The story sounds familiar, but it might be worth taking a closer look at. At its core, it is still the story that Uli Hoeneß always told so gleefully: that the national team is always doing well when FC Bayern is doing well – because the national team simply takes the great Bayern players and wins with them against Liechtenstein allowed. Flick’s current line-up is also evidence of that historical block formation (eight Bayern players), but the new version of the story is no longer just about quantity. It’s about qualities that complement and build on each other.
German football didn’t plan that, but it now has two coaches in the right place. In the Heynckes way, Flick could probably have shaped an era at Bayern, but his approach “as much pragmatism as possible, as much finesse as necessary” fits the profile of a tournament coach who has to make clear and efficient decisions. In the meantime, Nagelsmann can tactically train the Bayern players who have been revived by Flick in a classic way and, for example, invent creative positions for Leroy Sané. You can imagine it as in the automotive industry: Modern electric drives need the ideas of a new generation of engineers, but always on the basis of tried and tested knowledge.
It can be assumed that both the national team and FC Bayern will benefit from this mutual transfer of knowledge and emotions and, ideally, will grow together. What German club football thinks of it is a different matter.