A good-humored “troublemaker”: Max Eberl at his performance on Tuesday in the Munich Arena
Photo: imago/Sven Simon
At least visually, Max Eberl provided a contrasting program at his first appearance in Munich. He came to the large arena in checkered chinos and a black blouson jacket to be introduced as FC Bayern’s new sports director. Next to his future colleagues, club boss Jan-Christian Dreesen and president Herbert Hainer, who were dressed more conservatively in suits, the new guy almost seemed like a troublemaker, purely fashionably of course. It may still be too early to talk about a turning point for the German record champions. But Eberl’s appointment is definitely a departure into a new era.
He is not “a savior,” but rather “a guy who wants to get things done.” I am someone who can and wants to work well in a team,” said Eberl on Tuesday. He was officially appointed by FC Bayern’s supervisory board on Monday, but it feels like he’s been there for almost half a year. After he was released from RasenBallsport Leipzig at the end of September, he immediately showed up in Munich. Truly only on an official mission, after all he is Bavarian and has lived in the state capital for a long time. But his name immediately appeared in the corridors of the club’s headquarters and thus also in the Munich public and the media. According to Eberl, the first contact took place in November.
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It’s an almost logical connection because Eberl and the German record champions have a common past. Trained as a footballer in FC Bayern’s youth ranks, he went through all the junior teams and knows what makes the club tick – certainly a little different today than it was 30 or 35 years ago, but that “stable smell” is also not entirely unimportant at FC Bayern Munich is. Eberl said he saw the club grow big. As a player, he remembers, he had to pack packages in the fan shop that had just opened because his coach Hermann Gerland didn’t want us “hanging around during the summer break.” “Sure,” he admits, “you always dream of working here again. »Now I have a clear mission.«
Eberl is aware that he is taking on a great legacy in Munich. Under the direction of his predecessor Uli Hoeneß and the former club boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, FC Bayern rose to the European haute volée and collected titles like other people collect souvenirs. He can live with the fact that the two of them are still involved: “I would be stupid if I didn’t include their expertise.”
In the next few days, Eberl will move into an office on Säbener Strasse. He officially starts on Friday, the same evening the team plays in the Bundesliga against SC Freiburg. Of course, the sports director does not come unprepared. Eberl last sat in the stands at Munich’s Bundesliga game in Augsburg at the end of January. It was already clear back then that there would be a lot to do for him. Now, three defeats and an announced separation from coach Thomas Tuchel later, there is still more to do. Yes, he has made a few notes in the past few days, but the piece of paper isn’t too big, “DIN A5 size”, this “small pad” needs to be processed.
Not only does a new coach have to be presented in Munich in the summer, FC Bayern also needs a few new players – and a new identity, which can be the same as the old one that brought FC Bayern lots of titles over the past eleven years , but seems to have been lost somehow. A thorough modernization is required. Eberl speaks of “a great challenge in finding a suitable coach and the right players as quickly as possible. That’s not easy.” In the remaining three months of the season, said Eberl, we will see “who gives Bayern this heart and soul. Character and mentality are also evident in the hunter role.«
Eberl once felt firsthand what it meant to play for FC Bayern. In October 1991, the club had just hired Sören Lerby as head coach after a disastrous start to the season. The still inexperienced Dane listened to Hermann Gerland’s advice and fielded Eberl, an 18-year-old debutant, against VfB Stuttgart. “That made me a little nervous,” Eberl later recalled. Overwhelmed with the task of integrating into a team that was already not functioning, he was substituted during the break, never played again in the first team, and from then on only played for the second team and left the club in 1994.
Eberl nevertheless became a solid Bundesliga player and then an even better manager at Borussia Mönchengladbach – with a good feel for the right players. He is aware that the demands at Bayern are higher. »The level is of course different. But in the end, this is also about football.”
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