There is always something now. There is always something later. Even as the sweat was drying on Bayern Munich’s 2-2 draw against Real Madrid on Tuesday night, thoughts were beginning to turn, with alarming speed, to new plans and new eras. While the outgoing Thomas Tuchel dissected the performances of Kim Min-jae and Leroy Sané in the broadcast zone, the top brass were a few yards away discussing his likely successor: Bayern’s present, and future, and soon-to-be past, all gauchely colliding against each other in one big hot mess.
The deal with Ralf Rangnick is not quite done at the time of writing, but by all accounts imminent. Rangnick is said to be keen, a three-year contract is waiting to be signed, and a seven-figure compensation deal with the Austrian Football Association, where Rangnick is contracted as national team coach, should be a formality. “We all know that Ralf Rangnick is a good coach and has achieved a lot in his career,” the sporting director, Christoph Freund, said. “If everything fits, then it will be done.”
Meanwhile, Tuchel girds his team for a crucial Bundesliga game on Saturday at Stuttgart, who can still steal second place. Next comes a second-leg showdown at the Bernabéu on Wednesday, with the prize of a Champions League final at Wembley still shimmering on the horizon. And of course, there is an irresistible parallel here with 2013, when the coach Jupp Heynckes was quietly eased out of a side door even as he was in the process of leading Bayern to a magnificent stuff-you treble.
Heynckes was so furious when informed that he was being replaced by Pep Guardiola that he initially refused to let the president, Uli Hoeness, into his apartment to break the news. And while Tuchel has largely kept a diplomatic counsel amid the feverish speculation over his replacement, there would be a satisfyingly cold symmetry in Bayern winning another Champions League crown under the aegis of a coach they had already decided to discard.
How did Bayern end up in this spot? Guardiola was at least their top target; Rangnick is at best a Plan C, hastily sketched out after Xabi Alonso and Julian Nagelsmann passed on the job. There was some lukewarm talk about Roberto De Zerbi and Hansi Flick, but very quickly – and a little surprisingly – Rangnick emerged as the clear favourite: one of the world’s biggest and most successful clubs entrusting its future to a coach who turns 66 next month and is without a major trophy in 13 years.
There is, of course, a faint logic at work here. Bayern are not simply gearing up for another season but rebuilding an entire mainframe. Freund’s arrival from Red Bull Salzburg, where he worked closely with Rangnick, was followed by the hiring of Max Eberl as director of sport in March (and no, the distinction between a director of sport and a sporting director has never been fully explained). Like Manchester United, Rangnick’s last club job, this is an institution essentially pressing the reset button, clearing out and starting again. Who better to lead the revolution than the man who turned Soft Drink FC into a global sporting giant?
Well, lots of people, probably. And certainly among Bayern fans, who have been vocal in their resistance to Rangnick in the days since his candidature became public, there is a natural wariness to the creeping soft-drink model, with its cultish corporate vibes and imperial, expansionist scope. Before last weekend’s game against Eintracht Frankfurt, some of them unfurled a banner protesting against the growing Red Bull influence in their club. The academy director, Jochen Sauer, another soft-drink alumnus, is masterminding a joint youth project with Los Angeles FC called “Red and Gold”.
If nothing else, Bayern’s wholehearted embrace of the Red Bull lifestyle exposes the way this super-club has basically run out of its own ideas, mislaid its sense of self. Over time the Bayern motto mia san mia – “we are who we are” – has degenerated into a kind of circular logic, an empty incantation held together only by the club’s serial dominance of the Bundesliga. Now even that has been smashed to bits by Bayer Leverkusen, the time feels ripe for revolution. And so what would it mean if this listing hulk somehow won their next two games and claimed the very biggest prize of all?
after newsletter promotion
Nobody really knows. In a way Tuchel was the logical end-point of the current Bayern model, the proven winner without a defined ideology hastily hired in a desperate attempt to keep the show on the road for another couple of years. Winning the Champions League would not invalidate the rationale for getting rid of him, any more than it would undermine the case for rebuilding the squad in a younger, hungrier profile.
But it would at the very least be deeply confusing; in the same way that it feels like a dereliction of priorities to allow a Champions League semi-final to be overshadowed by the imminent arrival of the Austria national team coach. There is always something now. There is always something later. But rarely has Bayern’s future felt more in conflict with Bayern’s present.