untung99.biz: What Hansi Flicks Exit Reveals About FC Bayern Munich

The unexpected drama between FC Bayern Munich and its manager Hansi Flick has lurched from the surprising to the bizarre.

Following Flick’s shock announcement after FC Bayern’s 3-2 win over Wolfsburg on Saturday that he’d asked the club to terminate his contract, the club released a statement.

It said FC Bayern “disapproves of the unilateral communications issued by Hansi Flick” because it wanted to keep the focus on the season’s remaining games.

It added that talks between the two parties would take place once the season was done.

From his statements issued yesterday, it is clear Flick has a very different perspective.

“I just wanted to tell the team after the game today because I knew how difficult and important it is that I told the club,” he said.

“It was important to me that the team hears it from me because there is already one or two things rumour[ed] [and] we have worked very well together for two years.”

The question on everyone’s lips is why?

There has been a long-running dispute with sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic over the decision to let senior players like Thiago Alcantara, David Alaba and Jerome Boateng leave.

While it is understandable that Flick might be annoyed at the aggressive approach to freshening up the playing staff, it was surely not enough to cause him to leave.

After all, Flick delivered the Champions League trophy to the Allianz arena last season along with the German title, which the club is poised to retain.

Its exit last week in this year’s competition to 2020 finalists Paris Saint-Germain was hardly a failure, the tie could easily have gone their way, especially if top scorer Robert Lewandowski had been fit.

Nevertheless, after less n two years the former Germany assistant manager had decided he’d had enough.

He’s far from the only manager to do so at FC Bayern.

Despite its reputation for prudence, astute management and continuity the Bavarian giants has burnt through their share of managers in the past two decades.

Since Ottmar Hitzfeld left in 2004 only Pep Guardiola has managed the club for three consecutive seasons.

_{Bayern Munich’s unlikely heroes}

Hansi Flick’s Champions League triumph continued a rather odd trend at Bayern Munich; the success of the un-chosen one. 

In the past decade, Bayern has tended to appoint big names like Carlo Ancelotti, Pep Guardiola and Louis Van Gaal, but it’s often been the less celebrated leaders who’ve delivered the most for the club.

Flick, for example, was brought in as Nico Kovac’s number two in 2019 with the aim of him strengthening the backroom team rather than as an alternative to the Croatian. 

When Kovac left just a few months in, Flick took charge temporarily and few could have imagined 9 months later he’d be holding the Champions League trophy aloft, but that’s what happened.

It was reminiscent of Jupp Heynckes, the steady pair hands brought in for two years between the reigns of Louis Van Gaal and Pep Guardiola, who also won the Champions League.

Both have a thoughtful, less-intense style which seemed to free the players to perform. 

Van Gaal’s exit with the benefit of hindsight

There appeared to be clear explanation’s for why Van Gaal and Guardiola left Bayern after relatively short spells, but, in light of Flick’s departure, it’s worth reconsidering the club’s role.

By the time Van Gaal left Bayern the wheels had fully come off, the team was struggling in a way not seen for some time.

Having won the title and reached the Champions League final the previous season, things shouldn’t have unravelled so fast.

Part of the reason was that Van Gaal began to clash with Bayern Munich heavyweights Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeness, both of whom became increasingly irritated by his unwillingness to listen.

As the Dutchman is somewhat of a combustible character with a famously large ego, when he left few considered FC Bayern were the difficult party.

But with the benefit of hindsight, you have to wonder whether they were.  

Van Gaal claimed that ex-president Hoeness had ”influence on everything from the board down to the coach” and that affected his relationship with the players.

How Flick has been undermined with others appearing to call the shots about the departures of key players in the past two years, does draw some parallels to the interference Van Gaal complained about. 

Guardiola: more than meets the eye?

From a public relations perspective, the departure of Pep Guardiola was managed spectacularly by FC Bayern.

It was an amicable parting of ways which, given the Catalan’s other brief spell managerial spell at Barcelona, was not entirely unexpected.

During his tenure, Guardiola did not clash with the club’s hierarchy like Van Gaal, but he did fall out with its medical team.

Four members of staff quit after reportedly being blamed for a Champions League defeat, although that was hardly evidence of the club refusing to give a manager what they want, if anything it was the opposite.

The questions about whether the Bayern structure was unable to accommodate Guardiola arises from the comfort he appears to have found at Manchester City and the length of his stay there.

Having clocked up three years in Bavaria, he’s now in his fifth at City.

Part of the reason he signed an extension earlier this season was because of “unfinished business” suspected to be the Champions League, the very same trophy he left Bavaria without delivering.

Guardiola and Van Gaal were both intense, demanding coaches so their disputes might be expected.

The more laid-back Flick, therefore, is more of a surprise and therefore perhaps a warning.

But it makes you think, who should they turn to next?

Like Real Madrid, the key seems to lie in empowering the players to perform, as Jupp Heynckes was good at doing.

When asked how, after coming in to replace Carlo Ancelotti in 2017 for a fourth spell at FC Bayern, he’d guided the club to the Bundesliga title the smooth-talking well-loved veteran said:

“I just give the players trust and steer them in the right direction.”