I haven't been posting much lately, primarily because I hate when the board goes into melt down mode and everyone throws logic and sense out the window... that and I've got no interest in pissing contests about Liverpool and Bayern. One thing that I have noticed over the past two seasons, which has been instrumental in our struggles, but has gone unmentioned here and elsewhere is the lack of a locker-room leader. Sure we are all in agreement that Mark van Bommel is not the best on field captain, but that is only half the story. In my opinion it is the less important half. We are experiencing a situation that is new to many FCB fans after so many years of strong leadership; there is not dominant character in the team to take control and put people in their place during a crisis. During Oliver Kahn's final season we had a squad full of huge egos, but surprisingly everyone managed to get along ok. Even after the disaster in St. Petersburg. Last season, and again this year, as soon as we see a bad result, or dip in form the players divide up into their cliques and sabotage the coach. We will not make any progress as a team until a real leader arrives, and no Schweini and Lahm absolutely do not have what it takes for this type of roll. What I fear most for this organization is that we have never been successfull without this type of player and I don't see any German footballers who have the charisma and leadership we saw in Kahn, Effenberg, Matthaeus, Beckenbauer et al. Nerlinger needs to take a long look at forming a team during this summer and not buying the best players. We need to build around a strong core with a solid leader at its center. To say that I'm not terribly optimistic would be an absolute understatement... I hope management realizes what the true issues here are and makes major changes to their approach.
I thought about this same topic awhile back, and I arrived at this simple solution.... The OLD Bayern left the day Oliver Kahn retired. And unfortunately, I am not sure it is ever coming back. Not at least until we have a leader of his nature.
This is what worries me. I don't see any players in Germany with the leadership qualities that Kahn had.
I think you are making a great point here. This team has suffered greatly in the last two years in the leadership department. There is no doubt, we would benefit greatly from a big captain who can step up at difficult situations, take responsibilty and lead the team. I agree that Van Bommel is not that type of player because simply he does not have a strong personality or doesn't care about the club that much. However, I think the solution lies deeper than just one leader. Actually, here you said it very well: team In my opinion, in modern football just one great personality is not enough.You need a team of players with strong mentality which can bind togehter and form a strong team spirit and character. You can clearly see that is missing at Bayern in the last few years. We are not just missing "Kahn" but also the hunger for victory and glory, the attitude that never gives up, the fighting spirit. The team looks like a bunch of losers who have never played together and piss their pants every time they step on the pitch. For example look at Barca. No one can doubt their team has enormous technical skill and talent. However, you can see they are a team of players who love to play for each other and are a group that enjoy their game. Look at Manchester United. Players like Rooney, Ferdinand, Giggs are winners who will fight to the end.Look at Bayern on the other side. Schweinsteiger, Pranjic, Altintop, Van Bommel are players that are just not winning material. I doubt just Kahn would have "rescued" this team. We would need many "Kahns" to do that. Look at the past. The team never really replaced key personalities. Look at this : Replacements: Ballack : Van Bommel Kahn : - Salihamidzic : - Jeremies : - And the list goes on and on.... I remember Beckenbauer (correct me if I'm wrong) saying that this season the squad is the strongest Bayern squad ever. This is bull***t if you ask me. Technically?Maybe. As a unit?Surely NO.
Maybe that is one of the main issues with recent Bayern sides. We are designed to have a charasmatic leader who keeps all of the other big personalities in check. Matakos: I think you hit the nail on the head. We do not have strong characters in this side. It seems that everyone is playing for their paycheck and trying not to make mistakes and get benched. When you have veterans like Luca Toni moaning about not starting and walking out of the lockerroom it has a domino effect. We need players who want to win no matter what, no a bunch of prima-donnas who spend more time reading their own press than playing footy.
I vote to have our version of the bayern locker room. Each of us gets to play one of the players and let us have our argument while acting as a player.
Props to Matakos. Great post. And props to NB on starting this thought-provoking thread. I think the main point is "presence". To have a player who barks orders is no different than what we presently have in Von Dumbass. But to have a player of whose presence was felt and showed the Bayern fight and spirit in his play seemed to be all the more convincing. Lucio for instance was a great example of the fighting spirit, as was Salihamidzic, Scholl, Hargreaves. Quiet leaders with a presence were Ballack, Elber, Ze Roberto. Vocal leaders with immense presence were Kahn and Effenberg. Now we only have a barking dog (MVB), hard-working fighters (Ribery, Olic), soft spoken followers (too many to name... Klose deserves special mention however), etc. Bayern's biggest mistake in my opinion in recent years was to never appoint Lucio a captain. I felt he truly was the captain type and had the club respected him enough to award that, he most definitely would be making a difference in our backline today.
Speaking of Lucio, I don't even want to imagine all the off-field drama it would have caused if two out of Lucio, Demichelis and DvB had been on the bench every week this season. Lucio was never a leader off the pitch due to his almost non-existent German skills. One of our major problems is the dead weight. We have 7, 8 player who have no future at the club and will leave either in January or the summer. That's 1/3 of the squad! Those guys (Altintop excluded) don't even care about what's going on anymore, show no effort in training. This situation is a consequence of bringing in a new coach every year. Every time they were about to get axed, a new coach came in and they got a new chance.
I cannot name one other player other than Ze Roberto deserving of the captain armband last year other than Lucio. Who was it again? MVB? pffft. What next Schweinsteiger?? LOL! Outstanding point. I fully agree. And the fact we don't stick with one coach is damaging the tradition at Bayern. The fact players are running the rule is just killing us. LOL! Didn't the same thing happen though when Beckenbauer and Uli ran the side in the mid-70's.
I'd take Schweini and Lahm over Van Bommel as captain any day, simply for the fact that 1) they are German and 2) they are youth players and have been here for years. It's funny the first time in the history of the club we get a non-German coach, the club loses its entire identity. I think this problem Nekki has pointed out is a bit harder to achieve. Hypothetically if no players we have are ready to be outspoken leaders, neither will the leader coming to Bayern. Can you imagine that type coming in next season and screaming to Schwieni, Lahm, Buyten and Co.? They would tell him right back to STFU because it's his first season and he needs to watch his mouth and show respect. The one with authority and leader must be someone whose been here for a few years, so if people right now think we don't have a leader in the current team, it's practically impossible to have such a leader until 2-4 years even if we buy him next summer.
Huh? Bayern has had 17 different coaches since they entered the Bundesliga, 8 of them weren't German. This is hardly the first time. Nevertheless, I don't think it has anything to do with LvG being dutch. MvB was made captain before LvG ever stepped foot in Munich. The downfall of this team began after 2001 when management pretty much said goodbye to any smart long term strategy and just continued doing what it thought was going to work forever it seems, buy top players from fellow Bundesliga competitors and not really worry about what it means for the actual team building. Everyone was right when they said the love of the game is missing. It looks to me like a collection of professional footballers who just want to collect their check, nothing more.
Let's also blame van Bommel for the economic crisis and global warming while we are at it. Jeez, he has become the scapegoat for everything that went wrong here.
Well in the defence of the deriding fans, MvB as a replacement for Ballack is just sort of laughable.
Fantastic post Matakos. I completely agree with you. Somewhere down the line Bayern's philosophy just disappeared. Look at it this way. A big change came about in 2002. Bayern responded to that by drafting in: Ballack as an Effenberg replacement Deisler as a Scholl replacement Hargreaves became an integral member replacing Jeremies Lucio as a Patrick Andersson replacement Ze Roberto not as a direct replacement but we lacked a left winger for a while before that. Roy Makaay came in later as an Elber replacement But then after that Balla-Makaay-Lucio-Ze led squads reached their peak in 2006/07 and then we suddenly had no replacements. Ballack left : and we initially bought nobody, Van Bommel came in later Hargreaves left: and we had no one to fill his role (although to be fair we got Ribery with his transfer money) Makaay left: Toni/Klose Deisler: no one Lucio: no one Sagnol retired: no one to fill his role Kahn retired: Rensing failed, no replacements The greatest void was in central midfield where we lost both Ballack and Hargreaves, two class players and only had Van Bommel to compensate. And we all know how important the center is in football. Also, we had some top quality players in fringe like Salihamadzic who are players we have not been able to replace sufficiently. This complete loss of structure as led us to be blind today and having to make panic buys like Robben without gauging the true balance of the squad.
Of course he would say that...because Ballack is at a level that MvB will apparently never reach. So making a statement like that would fail in two fronts...by position played (tactical) and skill level as a professional (technical and leadership)... I hated the transfer of MvB in the first place and I will not be happy until he no longer wears a Bayern shirt. No more MvB bashing from me now, I am done...