It was: The Week That Shook German Football (RealD 3D).
First, late on Tuesday night, Bruno Labbadia was appointed manager of the bottom team, Hamburger SV. The former Kaiserslautern striker and inventor of the fist-pump goal celebration had already graced (?) the AOL/Nordbank/Imtech/Kühne-Palace/Whatever-Arena bench five years ago and the sporting director, Dietmar Beiersdorfer, had no choice but to go back to a familiar face in the club’s hour of need: HSV had run out of the German-speaking coaches that had not yet been hired at some point over the last two decades. Within a few hours, however, the new/old messiah’s wings – messiahs do have wings, don’t they? – were already clipped when Beiersdorfer involuntarily dispensed with the charade that the hot contender Thomas Tuchel had been turned down by the club the night before. It was Tuchel who had pulled out on Monday, Beiersdorfer revealed in Labbadia’s inaugural press conference Part Deux. “He was my personal favourite,” said HSV’s other sporting director, Peter Knäbel, of Labbadia. Sure. The 49-year-old (nom de guerre: “beautiful Bruno”) was fortunately not disheartened by that small indiscretion. He immediately set out to ward off relegation with a bold “seven points plan” (Bild) that allegedly included useful skills like “experience”, “authenticity” and “talking up” his own players.
The northern derby against Werder Bremen offered a chance for instant hero-status. Bruno’s seven points sadly did not add up to anything tangible on the board, however. Hamburg showed some “good attempts” (Labbadia) of attempting to play some football but once again could not score. A silly foul from Valon Behrami on Zlatko Junuzovic gave the home team a penalty and Franco Di Santo converted. Defeats for Paderborn (16th) and Stuttgart (17th) left Hamburg with a fighting chance to stay up and the way things are going, one would not bet against history repeating itself, along with the punch line that goes with it. Hamburger SV: so bad that they cannot get relegated.
The struggle for survival of the “Dino” was only a sub-sub-plot, though, as Jürgen Klopp called time on seven years at the Signal Iduna Park on Wednesday. The 47-year-old axed himself, admitting that “a big head needed to roll – mine” after Borussia Dortmund’s disappointing season. Saturday’s match v Paderborn was suitably emotional, with fans chanting Klopp’s name towards the end of a 3-0 win. The home side played as if a heavy burden had been lifted off their shoulders. Klopp’s farewell tour before his relocation to the Premier League could yet end in a triumph of sorts, as Dortmund inched closer to a Europa League spot, and they can still win the DFB Cup this season. And in young Tuchel, they have secured the signature of the next best thing after Klopp, a coach of similar expertise and impact albeit a different management style. It will be fascinating to see the 41-year-old trying to develop Dortmund’s style and at the same time rebuild the squad. All the attention is on the fate of star players such as Mats Hummels and Ilkay Gündogan but it is the second-row regulars like Sven Bender, Kuba Blaszczykowski and Lukasz Piszczek who no longer look as if their bodies can take the strain. Tuchel either needs new personnel or to adopt a less radical style.
Not to be outdone by their former rivals, Bayern Munich did their bit to set off a few tremors themselves. Their 3-1 defeat away to Porto in the Champions League quarter-final first leg was followed by the resignation of Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt, the fabled medicine man who has been part of the furniture in Bavaria for almost 40 years. The good doctor had taken offence at being (overtly) blamed by the CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, for the defeat and decided to step down with immediate effect. Personal and professional tensions between the coach, Pep Guardiola, and “Mull”, as the players called him, had been festering for months at the Allianz Arena. This game of bones (and groans) was widely described as a power struggle but it was not so much about control as slightly melodramatic differences of opinion between two stubborn men that in the end proved unbridgeable. Guardiola wanted Müller-Wohlfahrt to be with the team at all times, not just on match days. Müller-Wohlfahrt said no and after much debate sent his (less illustrious) son Kilian by way of a grudging compromise. Guardiola, and Rummenigge eventually as well, were unhappy about the long recuperation times of injured key players like Franck Ribéry this season. There were also big disagreements over the correct treatment plans for players. The Spaniard Thiago Alcântara typically wanted to have surgery and therapy for his knee injury in Spain, for example. MW advised his own, trusted specialists and was miffed when he was ignored.
There is no right or wrong in this case, the club acknowledged, but they did take issue at Mull pulling out on the eve of their second leg v Porto, which left them scrambling to look for a replacement before the 2-0 win at Hoffenheim. Volker Braun, who was looking after the U-23s, is the new man with the magic sponge, at least until the end of the season.
Pep, the Catalan coaching god v the Dorian Gray-like, x-ray-fingered Mull suggests a fantastic mini-drama made in Munich, with a whiff of Weißwurscht provincialism but with enough glitz and glamorous names to exercise the wider football world. For once, however, the reality is far less intriguing than the headlines suggest. Müller-Wohlfahrt was due to hang up his sprinting boots for match-day call-outs in due course anyway and Bayern players will continue to see him at his cavernous practice in the city centre as before. Everbody can choose his own doctors at the club. There has already been a rapprochement between the main parties behind the scenes and the net effect of the whole episode will thus be pretty negligible. A permanent doctor will probably be installed at the training ground but he will certainly not be picked by Guardiola. And MW will receive a hero’s send-off at the last home game.
The manager’s critics in the local and football media, especially those who still do not forgive him for not doing one-on-one interviews, have ramped up the pressure on him in the wake of the Mull battle; the knives are drawn and ready to be stuck in should Bayern fail to make it past Porto on Tuesday night. Winning the championship and the cup will not be seen as enough in Munich, as Pep himself admitted on Monday. But if anything, the Spaniard is more secure in his job than 12 months ago, despite his detractors’ best efforts. All the relevant people, on the board and in the dressing room, are in awe of his work and would love nothing more than to extend his contract beyond 2016 – especially now that Tuchel, the most natural successor, has taken over on the other side.
Results Frankfurt 0-0 Gladbach, Dortmund 3-0 Paderborn, Leverkusen 4-0 Hannover (the defeat and old school “denim shirt and tie” coach Peter Neururer is apparently in the running to take over in Lower Saxony), Hertha 0-0 Köln, Hoffenheim 0-2 Bayern, Freiburg 2-3 Mainz, Augsburg 2-1 Stuttgart, Werder Bremen 1-0 Hamburger SV, Schalke 1-1 Wolfsburg.
