Bundesliga legend Lothar Matthaus believes big changes are coming at Bayern Munich next season following the arrival of Julian Nagelsmann as the club’s new head coach.
Bayern Munich with a new coach
Bayern will go into the 2021/22 campaign with a new man at the helm when the 33-year-old tactician departs RB Leipzig to take the reins from Hansi Flick, who himself will take over the German national team from Joachim Low.
Flick won seven titles across his 18 months in charge of Bayern, including the club’s second-ever continental treble that became a sextuple before his departure this summer. He leaves big shoes to fill for Nagelsmann, and Matthaus believes that the new man in charge at Bayern will have to both learn quickly and bring his own style to the job. “I think he has to improve the team, not only the individual players,” former Bayern and Borussia Mönchengladbach midfielder Matthaus said. “If you’ve followed Bayern for the last two years with Hansi Flick as the head coach, you see them always playing the same system: 4-2-3-1. This was the system from Bayern in each game and nothing changed.
What will be changed with Nagelsmann
“With Nagelsmann, they will change. He moves constantly from a three-man defence to four-man and even five-man. Sometimes he’s playing with two strikers, sometimes only with one striker. This will change at Bayern, but with the players, he has to get them behind him in the same way that Hansi Flick was doing and then he will have a great time in Munich.”
At Bayern, it’s all about winning in Matthaus’ eyes. And he should know, being a seven-time Bundesliga and three-time DFB Cup winner with the record German champions. But that is something Nagelsmann will have to learn during his time back in his native part of Germany.