Bayern Munich has hit the jackpot in the head coach department.
The club has a tactical mastermind in Vincent Kompany at the helm, who has the team functioning like a well-oiled machine at the moment. The players have never looked more comfortable on the pitch, and there is a joy, a spark, a life to the football on display that has bamboozled fans, both of Bayern Munich and of football in general.
This positionless “total football” approach, where players interchange positions constantly, operating as one entity while flowing seamlessly and adapting to opposition structures, kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid, has taken the team to a different level. And it is quite possible that Bayern might have former coach Pep Guardiola to thank.
In a recent Kicker interview (captured by @iMiaSanMia), Uli Hoeneß revealed that the Bayern brass approached Pep before appointing Kompany: “When we called Pep Guardiola before signing Vincent and asked what he thought of him, he said we could take him blindly.”
Damn right.
He then conceded, “We were skeptical at first; he was the fourth or fifth person we spoke to. I’m thinking of Julian Nagelsmann, Ralf Rangnick, Thomas Tuchel at first, and also Oliver Glasner, who would have come had Crystal Palace released him. Vincent was Max Eberl’s idea.”
Max Eberl, you absolute genius.
“The first meeting took place at Käfer’s [restaurant], with Herbert Hainer, Max, Christoph Freund, Vincent, and his father, a former mayor in Belgium. After half an hour, I gave Max a thumbs-up; I knew, This is him!” declared the Bayern Munich honorary president.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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