Eberl comes too late – Tuchel would still be coach with him

Max Eberl is now officially the new sports director of FC Bayern in Munich. It was about time – he’s already too late for one of them.

The time has finally come: Max Eberl is the new sports director at FC Bayern Munich. On Tuesday morning, the 50-year-old was presented in his eye-catching gray checkered chinos alongside President Herbert Hainer and CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen in the Allianz Arena. Finally, because it puts an end to the smear theater that has been going on since Eberl’s dismissal from RB Leipzig, which happened very suddenly at the end of September, right before the duel with Munich.

The word “decency” has often been used behind the scenes at the record champions in recent months in response to the question of why Eberl was not signed immediately, but only now, immediately after the second leg. Since the day he was released, there was no question that the ex-professional, who once became a professional footballer at Bayern, would arrive at his personal place of longing. It was only a matter of time before his big personal dream became reality.

And that, if Eberl is honest with himself, was actually even before he even started his engagement in Leipzig, which is why it was doomed to failure from the start and was ultimately the biggest misunderstanding of his career to date.

At least outwardly, Bayern appeared to be relaxed at the time with a view to Eberl’s impending move to Munich. After all, they had just hired Christoph Freund from Red Bull Salzburg as the new sports director and thus scored a coup. The tenor, which could also be heard from the management team, was: We don’t necessarily need Eberl now, but the possibility of being able to get him at some point would still be nice.

That was a misconception, as we discovered almost five months later. They showed that it was high time for Eberl to finally get started. Because Bayern definitely needs him – immediately. In fact, he’s already late. Because with him, Thomas Tuchel might have continued to coach – beyond the end of the collaboration that has now been decided in the summer.

Why? Not because Eberl might have made the short-term decision against Tuchel differently. During his presentation, he even described it as “right”, but expressly emphasized that he had not already been involved in it in the background.

No, because with him it might not have happened in the first place. Because Tuchel in particular has been missing someone like Eberl at his side in the past few months. This became abundantly clear in the most difficult week of the club’s most recent decade, in which the Munich team suffered three serious defeats in a row and thus (at least almost) lost one title after another. The first of these, the 3-0 loss in Leverkusen, was also the most sensitive – a humiliating, premature knockout blow in a direct duel in the fight for the championship.

In the catacombs of the BayArena, club officials had a hard time finding explanations for this. Dreesen initially hesitated to even comment on it in the mixed zone. Possibly also because, as a former banker, in addition to his undisputed economic seriousness, he lacks the sporting past and therefore the credibility to point the finger specifically at the team or even individual players – and thus away from the coach.

Doing exactly that would have been a given for Uli Hoeneß or Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in this situation. Just like for Eberl, whom Hoeneß in particular has considered as his personal successor for many years and has now enthroned him. Eberl could have been exactly the lightning rod that Tuchel was missing during this difficult phase. What Matthias Sammer once was as sports director, link to the team and eternal warning for Pep Guardiola.