Bayern Munich is very unhappy with Hansi Flick’s public declaration that he wants to leave the club after two “fantastic years” in charge.
Flick’s men are out of the Champions League, which they won last year, but well on track to run away with the Bundesliga for a second-straight season.
With the domestic honors (almost completely) under wraps and the Germany national team job opening up after EURO, Flick is ready to leave Bayern with an impeccable record and nothing left to prove to the Allianz Arena set.
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But the former Germany assistant’s post-match comments asking for his contract to be terminated after the season are not living well in Munich, even after Flick carefully expressed his position with a series of positives about Bayern.
“I am delighted with my team and I am grateful to the club for being allowed to train such a team,” is an example.
The club’s board has released the following statement, which clearly will neither change anything nor make anyone look good, but something something about power...FC Bayern head coach Hansi Flick made public his wish to terminate his contract, which runs until June 2023, at the end of the current season. Hansi Flick had informed the FC Bayern München AG executive board of this wish during the past week. Hansi Flick and FC Bayern had agreed to place the focus on the matches against VfL Wolfsburg, Bayer 04 Leverkusen (20 April) and 1. FSV Mainz 05 (24 April), in order not to disrupt the concentration of the whole club on these three important matches.
FC Bayern disapproves of the unilateral communications issued by Hansi Flick and will continue talks after the match at Mainz, as agreed.
Even if this is just a “We’ll figure it out later” message, it feels unnecessarily strong if the club had any designs on either keeping Flick around or appearing cognizant of the transitory nature of all managers or at least the added power of very successful ones.
Flick’s gone, Bayern looks worse for it, and we’re not sure this makes someone like Julian Nagelsmann think, “Hmm, I’ve said no to Real Madrid and am royalty at Leipzig as the world’s most sought-after young manager. Let me leave for this situation, where they’ve ripped apart the boss who cleaned up a mess and won all the time.”
When you consider that Bayern performed well enough to beat PSG despite a distinct lack of Robert Lewandowski, one of the world’s most lethal and in-form finishers, it’s a weird look for the Bavarians.