Bayern Munich have won more trophies in recent years than even most other giants of the game. Despite that, they have struggled incredibly to keep hold of coaches. The club have been often been quick to let managers go throughout their modern history, but even more so since Pep Guardiola’s 2016 departure to Manchester City. Not counting the interim stints of Willy Sagnol and Jupp Heynckes each during the 2017/18 season, the German record champions have hired and sacked five coaches, including current Bayern Munich manager Thomas Tuchel at the end of the season. Last Word on Football brings you an overview of the short reigns in charge of each of them.
Short-Term Bayern Munich Coaches
Bayern Munich Coaches: Carlo Ancelotti
Ancelotti was Pep’s immediate successor. The Italian grand tactician came to Munich with much promise at the start of the 2016/17 season. In terms of major trophies though, he was only able to deliver one Bundesliga title that came in 2017. With the retirements of Xabi Alonso and especially club legend Philipp Lahm later that summer, there was something of a rebuilding process ongoing in the team. When the results did not go the Bavarians’ way, the dressing room started to turn against the coach. After the team let a 2-0 halftime lead slip away domestic league game against VfL Wolfsburg, only getting a draw in the end, they followed that up with a disastrous Champions League performance against PSG, which was Ancelotti’s last match.
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He was sacked in late September 2017, after exactly 60 games in charge with a 2.28 points per match average. His assistant Sagnol, a Bayern fan favourite during his playing days, took charge for one match. After that, club legend Jupp Heynckes once again came out of retirement to lead the team to another Bundesliga title, a Champions League semifinal appearance and a defeat in the German Cup final to Niko Kovac’s Eintracht Frankfurt side at the end-of-the-season. The latter had by that point already been appointed as the next man in charge of Bayern Munich’s first team.
Niko Kovac
Kovac had big shoes to fill, not just in terms of replacing the great Heynckes but also two other world-class coaches in Pep and Ancelotti. It was a task that was going to be too much for the young former Bayern player. He took over in the summer of 2018, but despite having triumphed in the German Cup final against his future employers, he never seemed to have gained the respect of the Bayern dressing room. He helped the team narrowly win the league on the last day of play and followed that up with the domestic cup a week later.
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Despite leading the Bavarians to their first domestic double since 2016, he fell well short of reaching the European success required. In the Round of 16 of the Champions League, he thought he could park the bus twice against Liverpool and thus maybe get into extra time. The plan worked at Anfield, but the team were undone in the second leg at home. Not only was that plan unsuccessful – but this overly defensive style was not at all Bayern-like.
Everyone around the club seemed to hold those Liverpool results against the German-born Croatian Bayern coach. On top of that, two legendary players left the club in the summer of 2019 in Arjen Robben and Frank Ribery. More rebuilding was needed, but Kovac lacked the respect of the players to pull it off. After a 5-1 defeat to Frankfurt in early November of that year he was also let go. After 65 matches and a 2.26 points per game average, he ended his time at Bayern.
Hansi Flick
Flick started as the assistant to Kovac in the summer of 2019. He had been the assistant coach of the German national team when they won the 2014 World Cup. His previous experience as head coach was limited to German lower-league football. When Flick took over as the Bayern coach, it was initially on an interim basis. But the results before the COVID-19 pandemic were so good that the club hierarchy soon made the job his. He kept the players fit during the lockdown period and won the league and cup double.
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When the Champions League also resumed, the team blew Chelsea, Barcelona, and Olimipique Lyon out of the water, thus reaching the final, where they overcame PSG to become champions of Europe. In the first half of the following season – Bayern also won the German and European Super Cups. Later they triumphed in the FIFA Club World Cup, which completed the collection of trophies a team can win in a calendar year.
But due to Bayern’s bad performance in the 2020/21 Champions League and early exit from the domestic cup they only won the league, and there was trouble in paradise. When adding to that Flick’s differences on transfer policy with some in the club leadership, it was no surprise that despite all of the success, the coach and Bayern went their separate ways in the summer of 2021. Flick left the club after 86 matches and a remarkable points-per-game average of 2.53.
Julian Nagelsman
The Bavarians had put much hope into Nagelsmann when they signed him from RB Leipzig on a five-year deal. As Bayern Munich’s coach, he won the league with minimal fuss but was knocked out of the Champions League and the domestic cup quite early. With the sale of Robert Lewandowski the following summer and without a suitable replacement at the time, Bayern had problems with consistency in the attack. The first half of Nagelsmann’s second season was still solid, but the team fell apart in the Bundesliga after the winter break. Members of the board saw the team’s objectives in danger, so they pulled the plug on Julian in April of 2023. He left as Bayern Munich coach after 84 matches in charge and an average of 2.31 points per game.
Thomas Tuchel
Two members of the board fired Nagelsmann and hired Tuchel without consultation with the club president or anybody on his supervisory board. They were both let go themselves at the end of the season after the team narrowly held on to the league title on the final day. The coaching change left the squad in shock, and it left Tuchel working with a board that had not hired him. He never was able to overcome that, and after the first bad run of form this season, they decided to terminate his contract at the end of the term.
Whoever takes over as Bayern Munich coach next season better have a thick skin and an awareness of how quickly their job could be on the line.
