As Bayern Munich announced on Wednesday, they will part ways with coach Thomas Tuchel at the end of the season. After three consecutive losses in all competitions and plenty of speculation in the media that the coach has lost the locker room, this news does not particularly come as a surprise. Even the decision to try to finish the season with Tuchel is understandable, given how badly the coaching change of late last season affected the team going forward. Last Word on Football brings you our list of some potential candidates for the Bayern job.
Who Could Replace Thomas Tuchel at Bayern?
Zinédine Zidane
Zidane is a name that the media have discussed in connection to Bayern for some time now. His two relatively short, but successful spells at Real Madrid were his only major coaching jobs. Yet, his trophy cabinet during that time speaks for itself. He helped the Los Blancos win three UEFA Champions League titles along with two La Liga trophies, just to name the most relevant.
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As arguably one of the greatest players to ever play the game, he also should have the respect of most in the Bayern dressing room, which many former (and indeed current) coaches of the Bavarians have struggled with. The fact that he was a hero for the French national side for a generation should also help, as the team have a sizable group of French players in the squad.
Xabi Alonso
Alonso may in theory be the best of all potential candidates for the position. He finished his playing career in Munich. He is young, speaks German fluently and most importantly, he is having an incredible season at Bayer Leverkusen, a club whose very culture he has managed to change positively in just over 500 days in charge there. They are highly likely to win their first-ever Bundesliga title this season and are favourites to take what would be their second German Cup as well, with Bayern, Dortmund, and Leipzig long out of that competition.
Depending on who they face in the UEFA Europa League knockout stages, they may go far there too. The problem with Alson is that that kind of success breeds interest from many clubs besides just the Bavarians.
Unai Emery
The current Aston Villa coach is also listed as one of the potential candidates for the Bayern rol. He too is certainly having a great season with a side not too accustomed to such success. But he generally does well with smaller clubs. Two seasons ago he knocked the Bavarians out in the quarterfinals of the Champions League with his Villareal team.
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Despite that, he simply does not seem to be the type of coach who could handle this big of a task, as he has failed at Arsenal and PSG, the biggest clubs he has coached in his career thus far.
Hansi Flick
The former Bayern coach (and player) would certainly be the clear fan favourite for the job. With Flick at the helm, the team won the treble in 2020 and became only the second side, joining Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, to follow that up with winning the domestic Super Cup, the UEFA Super Cup as well as the FIFA Club World Cup, and thus win six trophies in a calendar year.
He then had a falling out with the now-former sporting director of the club Hasan Salihamidžić over transfer policy and decided to coach Germany instead. Despite the ouster of Salihamidžić at the end of last season and Flick’s departure from the national team, the Bayern board are unlikely to go with him again, particularly after the German national team went out at the group stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup under him.
Sebastian Hoeneß
Another one of the candidates for the Bayern job would be the current VfB Stuttgart coach and nephew of the most influential person at the club over the last few decades, honourary president Uli Hoeneß.
The younger relative took over at his current team towards the end of last season, when they were bottom of the league. He rescued them from relegation through the Bundesliga Promotion/Relegation Playoff, before remarkably turning them into strong top-four candidates this time around.
He even coached a couple of Bayern youth teams, before being promoted to managing the club’s reserves for the 2019/20 campaign. With Hoeneß in charge, the team won the German Third Division (the highest league a German reserve team is allowed to enter). Since then, he had a spell at Hoffenheim, before joining Stuttgart. He seems destined to eventually return to Munich to take over the first team one day, but until then, he should get some European experience under his belt.
Bayern Munich have a problem with keeping coaches on the job. They had that problem for decades. With so many former star players in and around the club, it makes it difficult for any coach to last long. There are so many voices there, claiming to know better than the coach, no matter his experience or pedigree. Since Guardiola left in 2016, no one has managed to stay there for even two full seasons. Before that, things were hardly more stable, as only Ottmar Hitzfeld in his first spell at the side had a long era in charge in recent times, (from 1998-2004.)
