Flying over Europe is not enough to guarantee the job security of a Bayern Munich coach, Julian Nagelsmann has learned that the hard way. Imperial in Europe – Paris Saint-Germain, eliminated in the round of 16 at the start of the month, can testify to this – and still in the running to win all the competitions in which it participates, the Bavarian club announced, on Friday March 24, to separate from his coach in place since the summer of 2021.
"We have come to the conclusion that the quality of our team is less and less put forward," said Oliver Kahn, Bayern manager, in a press release. Since the World Cup, we have been playing with less success and less appeal. These fluctuations in our performance have cast doubt on our goals for the season and for the future. That is why we have acted now. Former PSG technician Thomas Tuchel has been appointed to replace his young compatriot until the end of the 2025 season.
At the heart of the international break, during which the majority of the "Rekordmeister" players joined their selections to play, among other things, the qualifiers for Euro 2024, this sudden decision is surprising. Earlier this week, the president of the Bavarian giant was complimentary to his technician. “Julian is already very advanced. He's a great coach, who demonstrated his tactical and strategic excellence against Paris at the highest European level," Herbert Hainer told Kicker magazine. Sporting director of Bayern and former player of the Roten (the Reds) - a trait shared with many leaders of the club -, Hasan Salihamidzic spoke recently of a "long-term project" with the 35-year-old coach, poached from the RB Leipzig in the summer of 2021 for 25 million euros, and under contract until 2026.
A degraded atmosphere at the club
Among the ten-time reigning German champions, qualifying for the quarter-finals of the Champions League - they will face Manchester City - is not enough if the "Rekordmeister" is not a prophet in his country. And the young Bavarian coach is paying for his team's difficulties in the Bundesliga. With "only" 52 points scored in 25 games, the partners of Frenchman Kinglsey Coman are having their worst season for eleven years - and the start of the series of ten coronations in a row. And nine days from the end of the championship, Thomas Müller and his family gave up "their" place at the top of the Bundesliga last weekend to their great rival, Borussia Dortmund - undefeated in the league in 2023 (nine wins and one match no). However, Bayern remain one point behind the yellow and black (53 points), which they will receive when they return from the international break on Saturday April 1.
Before entering a month of April of all dangers, where the confrontation against the rival of the Ruhr will follow one another and the double opposition against Manchester City of Pep Guardiola, his former coach, the Bavarian giant has therefore chosen to part ways with Julian Nagelsmann. This dismissal, the former genius of the bench of Hoffenheim then of Leipzig – he began his coaching career at 28 – would have learned from the press, according to the very informed Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano. This hasty departure should cost the former "FC Hollywood", the nickname of the club in the 1990s, when its stars made the "one" as much for their extra-sporting setbacks as for their performances on the lawns. The club will have to pay heavy compensation to the excluded technician, under contract until 2026.
If the Bayern internationals, questioned on the sidelines of their national team meetings, certainly did not hide their surprise at the announcement of the departure of their coach, the latter is paying for the degraded atmosphere within the Bavarian club. After having alienated his captain, goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, at the beginning of January for having ousted the goalkeeping coach, very close to the international goalkeeper, Julian Nagelsmann had complained in recent days of the presence "of a mole in [his] locker room,” after some of his sketches ended up in the press.
Thomas Tuchel named to repeat his 2021 performance
If the Bavarian leaders chose to provoke this palace revolution, it is above all because certain sporting choices by the German technician no longer suited them – such as the fact of having deprived themselves of Kingsley Coman and Jamal Musiala, his two players the fittest, in the last match.
If we had written, the day after the knockout stages of the Champions League on Wednesday March 8, that a coach of the two clubs concerned, Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich, would no longer be coaches before the end of the month, all football observers would have bet on the departure of Christophe Galtier from the Paris bench. The Marseille technician is however still in place, despite a complicated season for the capital club; and Julian Nagelsmann took the door.
And it is a coach well known to Parisian fans who will replace him. Sacked from Chelsea in September, Thomas Tuchel will succeed Julian Nagelsmann, Bayern Munich announced on Friday. Highly demanded by the biggest European clubs, the one who left each of his former clubs with a bang (Dortmund, PSG, Chelsea) had settled in the Bavarian capital with his family for a few months. The "Rekordmeister" must hope for a scenario similar to the last time the German technician was fired during the season: dismissed from the PSG bench, at the end of 2020, he had won the Champions League with the Blues four months more late.
Already on the shelves of the German giant in 2018, when he chose Paris, Thomas Tuchel knows what awaits him. Asked in September 2018 by L'Equipe about PSG's obsession with winning the Champions League, the man who led Kylian Mbappé's teammates to the final of the competition in 2020 warned: "In Germany, it's the the opposite for Bayern Munich: the club never talks about the Champions League, even if they want to win it. He says, "Championship first, championship first." “His now predecessor experienced this on Friday.
