Highly gifted players fail, everyone gets on each other’s nerves, and the coach is at a loss – FC Bayern cannot get out of the crisis.
It’s despairing: Harry Kane doesn’t manage to score against Lazio in the Champions League either.
Marco Iacobucci / Image
There were times when pity for VfL Bochum would have been appropriate before a day like this. Late on Sunday afternoon, the big FC Bayern Munich will be guests in the narrow stadium on Castroper Strasse, and if the record champions were still the old, powerful FC Bayern of the past few years, a cracking demonstration of strength would now most certainly follow.
This type of reaction to defeats is traditionally part of the core nature of the long-time champions from Munich, but this time the strong home team from Bochum can hope for success with good reasons. After the 3-0 dismantling of Leverkusen last Saturday, Bayern’s once feared reaction was weak; The game at Lazio Rome in the Champions League on Wednesday was also lost.
Somehow the old “Mia san mia” mechanism has broken down, that is the core finding of the past week. Even crisis communication fits into the image of the shrunken giant on Säbener Strasse.
Tuchel is the face of the crisis
Instead of radiating the old, emphatic calmness or at least a brisk “now more than ever” mood, those responsible are dredging up the clichés of the relegation battle. “We’re all in the same boat, it’s not easy right now,” says Christoph Freund, the sports director, but: “We’ll fight our way out of this together.”
However, the implementation of this resolution is made more difficult by the man from the coaching bench, who has never had the navigational confidence in difficult terrain that people like former CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge used to bring situations like this under control: Thomas Tuchel, who is becoming more and more becomes the face of the crisis.
When Tuchel was asked in Rome on Wednesday whether he feared for his job, he reacted tensely as usual. “No,” he says, repeats this answer when asked and seems to be trembling with anger inside. Tuchel, and this is actually very pleasing from the point of view of interested observers, has never mastered the art of speaking the superficial truths that are presented in the interview zones and at football press conferences. When he feels attacked, his resentment is just as evident as his helplessness in finding solutions.
He says more and more often that he cannot explain his achievements. Last weekend he admitted that he didn’t know why Harry Kane didn’t even come close to a chance to score in Leverkusen, and after Wednesday’s defeat in Rome he explained: “The second half leaves me at a loss.” And when asked why the team lost confidence in their own game after a decent start for no apparent reason: “I have no idea, I have no idea.”
Not only does this seem inconfident, this openness also makes Tuchel vulnerable, especially since he is surrounded by people who ask exactly the same questions in front of the cameras, making his honesty look like weakness. Possibly also in the eyes of many players. How much responsibility Tuchel really bears for the sporting slump is very unclear.
Because it is the team that plays inhibited, without any ease, without joy. Anyone who looks a little more carefully will quickly realize that there is a core question here that doesn’t just affect FC Bayern. A question to which neither Tuchel nor anyone else knows the answer: Why has this undisputedly highly talented generation of footballers around the leaders Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka and Leroy Sané, both in the national team and in the club, consistently failed for several years precisely when it was particularly important becomes?
It’s not like Bayern are currently losing to teams that are simply better, despite good performances. They just play badly in these moments. Tuchel has been the coach of FC Bayern for less than a year now, and in this short time he has managed the feat of losing five knockout games – a spectacular failure.
This is one of the reasons why people sometimes think back to the turning point almost a year ago in these February days, when the then CEO Oliver Kahn and his sports director Hasan Salihamidzic decided to end their collaboration with coach Julian Nagelsmann.
🗣️ @Oliver Kahn on the separation from Julian Nagelsmann: “We have the duty and responsibility to ensure sporting success. We asked ourselves why there are such big fluctuations in the team’s performance. We looked at everything very carefully… pic.twitter.com/2btNXd7035
— FC Bayern Munich (@FCBayern) March 25, 2023
At that time, Bayern were still represented in all three competitions, but Kahn saw “goals for this and next season at risk.” So Nagelsmann was fired and Tuchel was hired. Salihamidzic and Kahn are long gone, but the problems are still there. Just in an even more pronounced form.
Even Harry Kane is in a bad mood
In recent months, perhaps the most important force of all great football successes has seemed increasingly weaker at FC Bayern: the internal cohesion of the team, the joy of working together. You just have to look at the faces, at the gestures, everyone seems to be annoyed by someone. This bad mood – and this is certainly no coincidence – also characterizes the German national team and apparently even affected Harry Kane.
The goalscorer who was supposed to shoot Bayern to victory in the Champions League no longer scores, he doesn’t even have any chances anymore, and the smile has also disappeared from his face. But the coach is most annoyed because more and more people are calling for his dismissal and the Munich project, which is going off the rails, is threatening his reputation.
It’s clear that Tuchel has weaknesses and does things wrong, like his tactical mistake in the defeat in Leverkusen. But he’s coaching a team full of problems that he can’t do anything about. It is therefore difficult to say whether and when a dismissal could be threatened, especially since Uli Hoeness, the club’s patron, has long refused to follow the dynamics of the public mainstream when it comes to coaching issues. So far, no one in charge has said a word that fuels the discussion about the coach, which is getting louder and louder.
Supervisory board chairman Herbert Hainer tried to calm the situation on Thursday in an interview with Munich’s “tz” using empty phrases when he said: “Thomas Tuchel and his coaching team work meticulously and committedly. We now need an initial spark (…). We are all working on this together and I am convinced that we can do it.” It is unclear how much of this belief is still left after the trip to VfL Bochum.
An article from “NZZ am Sonntag”