Helpless, helpless, headless: After the humiliation at FSV Mainz 05, the shocked FC Bayern management team struggled in vain to explain the sporting crash – with different roles.
The criticized CEO Oliver Kahn attacked the players, spoke of a “catastrophe” if this season ended without a title, but put himself in front of coach Thomas Tuchel. His rest period after his almost historically bad Bayern start is over again.
Club president Herbert Hainer ruled out direct consequences for the time being – despite losing the lead in the table. According to information from “Bild”, a quick replacement of Kahn is “now a conceivable scenario”.
Typical Kahn rant
“What have we tried in the second half of the season: players, systems, tactics, change of coach. In the end there are eleven men who are on the pitch and have to work their ass off for the goals of this club,” Kahn railed after the first :3 in a typical angry speech. “That’s what it’s all about and nothing else. With this charisma it will be very difficult to become German champions.”
After the disgrace in Mainz, it is anything but impossible that Munich will end a season without winning a title for the first time since 2012. They were eliminated by Manchester City in the Champions League and by SC Freiburg in the DFB Cup. Followers Borussia Dortmund used Bayern’s template on Saturday and took the lead in the table with a 4-0 win over Eintracht Frankfurt with a one-point lead.
“We will not give up a millimeter to become German champions again this season despite a poor performance,” said Kahn. The rest of the Munich program seems slightly more complicated than that of BVB. On Sunday, Hertha BSC will be the bottom of the pack. “We’re concentrating on the German championship first. That will be difficult enough, as we saw today,” Hainer said with a gloomy expression about the possible consequences. “We’ll talk about everything else later.”
It is by no means certain that achieving this minimum goal will save Kahn’s job. Especially since hitting the insecure team seemed more like a distraction from their own mistakes. His support for Tuchel, who he brought in for Julian Nagelsmann with sports director Hasan Salihamidzic, also adds: “Thomas Tuchel is the last one we have to discuss.” The world-class coach made a huge false start with just two wins from seven competitive games – a negative record like that of Sören Lerby in 1991/192.
Tuchel looks helpless
Tuchel underestimated the task of steering FC Bayern back on the road to success with a few changes. After the disastrous performance at his ex-club, which he coached from 2009 to 2014, he seemed completely at a loss. “We have to declare a three-goal defeat. I don’t know how,” he said.
After Sadio Mané’s 1-0 (29th minute), Ludovic Ajorque (65′), Leandro Barreiro (73′) and Aarón Martín (79′) had scored the sensational turnaround within 14 minutes – without much resistance. The order, clarity and mental freshness were missing, was Tuchel’s diagnosis. Everything was too complicated, technically unclean and error-prone: “We look exhausted, as if the team already had 80 games under their belts.”
Tuchel had no idea how the star ensemble could be brought out of the deep. “I would prefer it to be obvious what things we can work on. It’s not technical-tactical and structural problems,” he said. “I have the feeling that conveying new content now in order to change something again is of no use. Everyone is fighting with themselves. It’s slipping through our hands.”
Salihamidzic was also unable to contribute anything groundbreaking to solving the problems, except for commonplaces that games could only be won “through the fight” – and the goals were missing. His assessment of the situation after the Mainz debacle, on the other hand, was apt: “Of course today is a low point.”
ordered a break
Instead of lectures and crisis talks, Tuchel ordered his players to take a three-day break until Wednesday for mental recovery, which was “urgently needed for everyone”. “Because there is no energy, and we won’t get it if we all call in and keep going,” he explained.
Captain Thomas Müller also welcomed this time-out in order to “feed back to his own family”. Because: “There is a certain emptiness and helplessness in me.” The team couldn’t shake off the setbacks in the cup and in the Champions League “somewhere deep inside,” said Müller: “We’re only human.”
