And that’s exactly where Kompany has to show what he can do: He has to clearly show these players – who all want to play regularly and ideally from the start – how he plans with them, who he will give a short break and when, who will be in the starting line-up when, who will come off the bench when. That is his big task. But: Based on all the impressions from his time at Bayern, Kompany is a strong communicator when talking to his players and will strike the right tone here too.
Lennart Karl didn’t hit the right note recently when he declared during a visit to the fan club that Real Madrid was his dream club. For this he was directly and publicly attacked by some supposed experts who immediately said that it wasn’t possible. This is complete nonsense. I say: Leave the boy alone!
Karl is only 17 years old, at that age you can afford to make mistakes. Now his personality is developing, now he is learning how to deal with such situations – and later he even went directly to the Bayern management team and apologized for his statement. He won’t make that mistake again. He is also lucky that Michael Ballack is his advisor and he knows exactly how the business works. His experience will be particularly helpful to Karl in such moments.
In contrast, Bayern’s CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen struck exactly the right tone towards the record champions’ fans. “We are really considering whether we should close the entire south curve,” said Dreesen in an interview with t-online with a view to the next home game in the Champions League – because there the Bayern supporters had set off massive pyrotechnics in the 3-1 win against Sporting. The result: UEFA punished the club with 50,000 euros and a partial exclusion from the south curve.