After the Bayern basketball team’s cup victory, President Hainer made a championship announcement on t-online. And explains the plan with Hoeneß’ heart project.
How important Uli Hoeneß and Herbert Hainer are to FC Bayern’s basketball players is documented by their personal presence alone. Because while the record champions’ footballers played the deciding game for their head coach Thomas Tuchel in Bochum and lost 2-3, the two club grandees were in the Munich basketball hall. To support their shared passion project at the Top Four tournament. With the cup victory, which the FCBB celebrated in the final with a confident and dominant 81:65 against Ulm, this was also achieved to the fullest satisfaction.
Club patron Hoeneß, who launched the project in 2010 with a restart in league two, quietly enjoyed the triumph. Referring to the two football rivals, who also have a successful basketball team in the club, Hoeneß said at the time: “What Real Madrid and FC Barcelona can do, we can do at FC Bayern too.”
Now he watched with his head held high and a proud look as Real Madrid’s former successful coach Pablo Laso celebrated his first trophy with Bayern in a shower of golden confetti. When he saw this, the honorary president disappeared towards the exit, wordlessly and largely unobserved, while the awards ceremony was still underway.
Hainer: Football players can take an example from that
Hainer, who, as his successor as Bayern president, is equally committed to the basketball project, enjoyed winning the title to the fullest. In an interview with t, he answered the question of whether the struggling footballers, who bowed out of the DFB Cup early this season for the fourth time in a row with a 1-2 defeat in the second round at third division Saarbrücken, can learn something from this -unique online.
“Absolutely. The footballers can now take an example from the basketball players, who won the cup twice in a row,” said Hainer. And immediately sent a specific order to the football department, which is currently stumbling towards the first completely titleless season since 2012: “Of course we would like to go to Berlin again.” As is well known, the DFB Cup final is traditionally held there.
In any case, the basketball players had lived up to Hainer’s expectations to the fullest satisfaction. The 69-year-old admitted that there was “a lot of expectation” before the tournament: “On the one hand because we were cup defenders and on the other hand because we had the final at home.”
Both in the semi-final against Bamberg and in the final against the reigning German champions Ulm, who had beaten Munich 3-0 in the best-of-five playoffs in the summer, they gave their opponents no chance. National team captain and NBA star Dennis Schröder was also one of the prominent spectators in the BMW Park, which was sold out over the entire weekend, and who watched in awe at Bayern’s dominance.
Hainer with master announcement: “We want two titles this year”
The Munich team finally sent a masterful announcement to the competition. “I already said before that we want to win two titles this year,” said Hainer. They have now won 13 games in a row in the Bundesliga, most recently pushing the former league leaders Chemnitz out of first place in a direct duel. And now that he has won the cup with confidence, he added: “So I think we could be cautiously optimistic that we will also have a big say in the German championship.”
Hainer had already sent the basketball players into the new season with this clearly formulated goal. “It’s enough now that we haven’t become champions four times,” he said when asked by t-online at the FCBB’s opening press conference. “We put so much work into the project, you have to see the fruits.” The president announced: “We also want to defend the cup, and in the Euroleague the playoffs must be the goal.”