AFP
Hansi Flick wants to walk away from Bayern Munich after an 18-month odyssey saw him go from interim boss to Champions League and treble-winning head coach, yet looks likely to end amidst bitter acrimony.
Flick’s bombshell announcement on Saturday that he wants to terminate his contract comes just eight months after Bayern beat Paris Saint-Germain in last season’s Champions League final.
“It was important for me to tell the team, because we have worked together successfully for almost two years now,” a tense-looking Flick said after a 3-2 win at Wolfsburg.
His drawn demeanour was a far cry from the intense celebrations in the Bayern camp after Flick masterminded a jaw-dropping 8-2 thrashing of Lionel Messi’s Barcelona in last season’s Champions League quarter-finals.
Under Flick, Bayern had already secured the Bundesliga and German Cup before their sixth triumph in Europe’s premier tournament.
After winning the Champions League, Bayern swept up all before them, adding the German Super Cup and UEFA Super Cup, before lifting the Club World Cup title in Doha last February.
Flick’s rise was all the more stunning as he was only initially appointed caretaker coach when Niko Kovac was sacked in November 2019.
It was the 56-year-old’s first job as a Bundesliga head coach.
“We can all be happy that we chose Hansi Flick and put our trust in him,” said club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge after Bayern won the Champions League final in Lisbon.
“He’s returned that trust a hundredfold.”
Yet things have unravelled behind the scenes in the weeks since Bayern were crowned club world champions as tensions simmered between Flick and sports director Hasan Salihamidzic.
Disagreements about player recruitment and squad planning took a toll.
