Renato Sanches opens up about how he feels at Bayern Munich

In a recent interview captured by Sport1, Renato Sanches opened up about his difficult season with Bayern Munich. He didn’t play nearly as much as he would’ve liked, but he did cap off the season with a decent performance and a goal in Bayern’s title-clinching, 5-1 thumping of Eintracht Frankfurt.

Kovac made the decision to sub Kovac in at the 37-minute mark against Frankfurt after Leon Goretzka had taken a slight knock. Sanches did take a bit to settle in to the match and made a few stray passes briefly after his introduction, but grew into the match, highlighting his performance with a finely taken goal in the 58th minute, giving Bayern a 3-1 lead. Despite not getting a lot of minutes this season, he admits that he wasn’t too suprised when Kovac decided to put him on in place of the injured Goretzka:

I scored a goal. I’m satisfied and know that I can confirm this performance. I’m only waiting for more opportunities. I wasn’t surprised. I train and feel good. I haven’t played in a long time, but I was ready to show what I can do. People saw that in the game.

Looking forward, the 21-year old is unsure how much of a part he’ll play next season if he does stay at Bayern and doesn’t look to go elsewhere. He also said thathe feels Kovac knows that he wants to play far more than he does, but respects the manager's decisions on who he fields week in and week out:

I don’t know. We have to wait and see. The season lasts only one more week. Anything is possible. But as I said a few months ago, I want to play more. I’m a young player. When you’re young and don’t play much, you feel bad. I love soccer and simply want to be used more. I don’t have to talk about my situation with him every day. Of course he knows how I feel. But he makes the decisions and I respect that. At the end of the season, though, it’s too late to get more playing time. Still, I’m concentrating on my job. Today I had the chance to play, and that worked out really well.

There’s no disguising the fact that Sanches’s loan spell at Swansea City was quite disappointing, but if we wants to see more minutes, another loan spell outside of Munich might be on the cards for him. It was reported back in April that Bayern were weighing their options for a potential loan spell for Sanches, but it was not specified what clubs were under consideration. Regardless, he said that he and Kovac have not yet spoken about next season and whether or not the Croatian sees Sanches in his plans:

No, we haven’t spoken with one another yet. In the next few weeks we’ll talk and then see what happens. I simply want the best for my and my family. I want to be happy; but when you don’t play, you’re not happy.

Hindsight is alway 20/20, but reflecting on his time with Bayern, the Portuguese midfielder retrospectively said that he might not have been ready to make the next step in his career just yet, despite adjusting quite well to living in Germany:

When I transferred to Bayern, I thought I was ready to take this step. But I wasn’t yet. Now I feel very good. Germany has become my second home. But that doesn’t change anything about my situation. I want to play more and show that I’m a good player.

Hopefully once Kovac and Sanches speak after the season concludes, they’ll be on the same page and he’ll be able to figure out whether or not he should go somewhere else to play more.