Thomas Müller has lost his regular place at FC Bayern under head coach Thomas Tuchel. His unusual role as a substitute has become a real political issue in Munich. A former Bundesliga coach now draws an interesting comparison.
Until March of this year, Robin Dutt was still active as a coach at the Austrian first division club Wolfsberger AC, but was fired there after missing the championship round.
Dutt previously worked in the Bundesliga as head coach at SC Freiburg, Werder Bremen and VfL Bochum. The football coach was also under contract with Bayer Leverkusen, but was released prematurely in April 2012 during his first season with the Werkself.
During his time at Leverkusen, Robin Dutt also coached Michael Ballack, who had returned to the Rhine after four years at Chelsea, where he had worked between 1999 and 2022.
Under Dutt, Ballack found himself more and more on the substitutes’ bench, a situation similar to that at Bayern Munich with Thomas Müller.
In an interview with “Sky”, Dutt remembered the time: “I came from Freiburg to Leverkusen at the time and didn’t have a lot of experience to back me up. I certainly made one or the other mistake in dealing with it, due to a lack of experience”, the 58-year-old admitted frankly.
Ex-Ballack coach points to a “certain climate” within a team
“With deserving players like Michael Ballack or now Thomas Müller, even if they don’t play regularly, you have to try to moderate it in such a way that everyone sees themselves as part of the whole. That is the supreme discipline of the coach – at Bayern even more than at Leverkusen. In hindsight, of course, I would have done a few things differently,” explained Dutt, who trained in Bochum in Germany until 2019 before joining WAC in Austria in 2021.
Ballack had also lost his regular place in Leverkusen under Dutt when he was 35, but was still highly regarded within the team and among the fans.
Dutt only realized later that supposedly former world-class players like Michael Ballack or now Thomas Müller are not always about playing in absolute top form.
“Publicly and internally I’ve said that the players I think are the best play. But over time you realize that it’s not just the best individual players that are important for a good performance, but also a certain climate in the team, in the club needed,” explained Dutt.
In order to deal with the currently difficult situation, Thomas Tuchel needs to have a great deal of sensitivity, according to his fellow coach.