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Building for the future of the club was a tag line Bayern Munich was portraying when they signed Julian Nagelsmann from RB Leipzig and when Oliver Kahn and Herbert Hainer took over for the departing Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. Since that’s happened, there’s only been two Bundesliga titles to show in terms of silverware won and now there’s sort of a makeshift office and board in place to patch all of the existing holes. Rummenigge has returned to the supervisory board, Jan-Christian Dreesen is the club’s new CEO, and there is an ongoing search for a new sporting director.
The timing of the club’s decision to let both Kahn and Salihamidzic go on the same day that Bayern clinched their eleventh straight Bundesliga title was optically confusing, but by all accounts, both of their fates had been sealed well before a football had been kicked that day. Both Thomas Muller and Joshua Kimmich questioned why the club didn’t wait a few days to announce their decision, but what’s done is done and Bayern is going into a crucial summer transfer window.
Hoeness recently gave a lengthy interview to Suddeutsche Zeitung explaining the rationale for deciding to pull the plug on both Kahn and Brazzo. While Hoeness himself is no longer a front office member, it’s still been strongly suggested that he has a fair amount of input on some of the decisions made at the club. While there were a lot of things he felt both Kahn and Brazzo did right, he was particularly critical of the extended vacation they decided to give players during the World Cup period and immediately following the tournament. He felt they gave players too much time off during that period and that their performances were directly impacted by it.
“I have to make it clear that Oliver and Hasan primarily did a lot of things right. But all in all, many decisions have raised questions. For example, the thing with the winter (break) vacation. If you give four and a half weeks’ vacation, you need at least six weeks of preparation. But we only had two and a half weeks. Some of our players didn’t have any serious playing time from early November to mid-January,” Hoeness vented (via @iMiaSanMia).
During that winter break, Bayern only played one friendly, which was a 4-4 draw against RB Salzburg in the middle of January. For the sake of match fitness, Hoeness felt that was less than adequate in getting most of the players ready for the start of the second half of the season. “There was only one game against Salzburg. How are you supposed to be fit? During my playing career I’ve never had a four-week vacation, not even in the summer,” Hoeness ranted.
Hoeness is a big fan of Thomas Tuchel’s and was a big proponent for the club getting him to replace Nagelsmann. Because of the decisions made by Nagelsmann, Kahn, and Brazzo, or at least not the latter two overriding Nagelsmann, Hoeness feels that Tuchel inherited a squad that was not 100% fit and ready for the second half of the season. “I’m convinced that Thomas Tuchel had to suffer in the second half of the season because some players lacked the basic stamina,” he argued.
