Uli Hoeness: “There’s no dirty laundry with Niko Kovac”

Uli Hoeness was one of the guests of honor at Teresa Enke’s preview party in Hannover for the upcoming film about her husband, the late Robert Enke, former German goalkeeper for Hannover 96, Benfica, and Barcelona, who passed away in 2009. While in attendance, Hoeness was asked about the details surrounding Niko Kovac’s resignation as Bayernn manager, and he revealed the civil nature of the discussions that took place in the meeting with Kovac (Bild).

The club issued a press release after Kovac’s resignation was made official, and the release, Hoeness said, contained everything that was worth mentioning regarding why the decision was agreed upon between Kovac and the club’s front office:

Our press release was very comprehensive, contained everything. I can’t say now how things will go in the coming weeks. That’s not so important either, because we have three weeks now to decide how we’ll deal with it.

As far as the civil nature of Kovac’s decision, Hoeness revealed that there’s absolutely no bad blood between the club and Kovac and that everything about it was affable:

We did that well, had a super outcome with Niko Kovac. We reached a mutual agreement. There’s no dirty laundry with Niko. I spoke with him today on the phone. Everything’s ok. I had the feeling that he has been released from tremendous pressure.

Photo by A. Hassenstein/Getty Images for FC Bayern

There have already been a handful of names that have been linked with the next manager’s job at Bayern including Jose Mourinho, Ralf Rangnick, Erik ten Hag, Arsene Wenger, and Laurent Blanc. Hansi Flick will take charge of the club for the time being while Hermann Gerland has also been brought back to be an assistant manager alongside Flick. Interestingly enough, though, Hoeness looked forward to Bayern’s upcoming matches against Olympiacos and Borussia Dortmund and said that Bayern could have an idea of who the next coach will be by the next away game against Fortuna Düsseldorf:

Now we’ll calmly play against Olympiacos on Wednesday, on Saturday against Dortmund. I think that we’ll know by the next away game in Düsseldorf how the coach question will go on.

Of course, there is an international break after der Klassiker this weekend, so Bayern’s front office would have a little over 3 weeks time to hire a new coach if the Düsseldorf match is, in fact. the target date to have that done by.