FC Bayern Munich: restart with men from yesterday

After a memorable season, FC Bayern is once again German champion – and is still in crisis. Led by Uli Hoeneß, the old guard should now lead the club into the future.

In the end everything was the same as always. For weeks, the fans of Borussia Dortmund had been waiting for their team to finally dethrone FC Bayern – they could be sure of the support from almost all of Germany. After all, the mighty ones from Munich hadn’t seemed so beatable for a long time.

But as is well known, nothing came of it. The German champions are once again FC Bayern. Once again, Thomas Müller, Manuel Neuer and Co. lifted the trophy, and the next day several thousand fans gathered at Munich’s Marienplatz. Despite the dramatic finish in the Bundesliga, the mood was just as poor as in previous years.

When constant winning fills you up

The championship celebration on the town hall balcony has become a familiar ritual. Gone are the days when fans flocked to downtown Munich in droves to somehow get a centimeter of space on the overcrowded, euphoric Marienplatz. Gone are the days when important victories were celebrated so violently on Leopoldstrasse that traffic was paralyzed for hours several times a season.

That’s one of the reasons why, before the final day of the game, you kept hearing, even from die-hard Bayern fans, that a year without a title wouldn’t do you any harm. The constant winning has fed you, dulled you. Without an interim low, the eternal highs no longer arouse the really big feelings. So it’s not surprising that in the city’s beer gardens and pubs it’s not the big sporting success – the eleventh championship trophy in a row – that’s the main topic at the moment, but what went wrong – and what’s coming now.

Revolution as a step backwards

Because FC Bayern is more broken than after a big defeat. The self-dismantling, which began with the inglorious dismissal of coach Julian Nagelsmann, found its temporary climax immediately after the final whistle in Cologne. The double ejection of Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidzic made the rounds – and the ecstasy of the players on the pitch quickly became a minor matter.

Unlike in previous Bayern crises, this time there will be no step forward, no innovations. The next revolution is more of a step backwards. Club grandees Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had been preparing for their departure from Bayern for years. The two men who made FC Bayern big had chosen Kahn and Salihamidzic as administrators before they retired. The former club legends should lead the club into a new age and shape the next era.

Hoeneß fears for his life’s work

This plan failed just a year and a half after Rummenigge’s departure. Kahn’s biggest mistake was to force the cut-off from the old grandees too much. Hoeneß had repeatedly complained that Kahn hardly sought his advice, that he was isolating himself. An accusation that he repeated in his first interview after Kahn’s disempowerment: “The big disappointment is that I thought he could fill the office alone because of his personality, but he surrounded himself with his advisors instead,” Hoeneß said Kicker magazine.

As early as the end of April, one could guess that Hoeneß would no longer follow the situation at Bayern, his life’s work, from afar. The club had just been eliminated from the Champions League and had again lost their lead in the league against Mainz when Hoeneß made his public appearance at the Munich training ground. It was the prelude to a bigger bang. A rumble of thunder in the distance, which was supposed to announce the big thunderstorm that was to erupt over FC Bayern after the final whistle of the last Bundesliga game.

Return of the old crew

Now, at the age of 71, Hoeneß is again the strong man at Bayern. As a rubble man for reconstruction, for general renovation. There should be more peace in the club. In addition, the squad must be rebuilt. The commitment of a center forward, which the Munich team sorely missed this season, is probably just one of the many construction sites. After the horror of an almost untitled season, Hoeneß wants to tackle this task together with his old confidante: with President Herbert Hainer (68), Kahn’s successor Jan-Christian Dreesen (55) – and probably also with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (67) . It is the old crew with which FC Bayern was able to celebrate the treble in 2013 and 2020, the greatest success in the club’s history.

But the club has changed and the duo Rummenigge and Hoeneß will probably no longer hold an official position. Pulling the strings remains in the background. It is uncertain whether the old constellation in the new distribution of roles can act so successfully again. In recent years, the club has continued to develop – from a family football club to a commercial enterprise.

More numbers than emotions

Kahn’s successor Dreesen is a business man. He was never an active footballer, certainly not a club legend. And President Hainer is also a rather matter-of-fact numbers person. They are not emotional leaders like Hoeneß and Rummenigge.

How appropriate are the words Hainer used to introduce the new “CEO” Dreesen: “He has been with the company for ten years,” said Hainer, avoiding the word association. And then he used words like “workforce”, “stability” and “security”. That doesn’t sound like great emotions that many Bayern fans miss.