Jörg Wacker leaves Bayern Munich’s board of directors without any real explanation from the club

It was officially announced yesterday by Bayern Munich that Jörg Wacker was resigning from the club’s executive board (FC Bayern Munchen AG). He has been with the club since 2013 and served in what had been the newly created position in the board responsible for “internationalization and strategy.” He was the chief architect behind opening offices in both New York City (2014) and Shanghai, China (China) as a part of his efforts to expand Bayern overseas to massive marketplaces. From 2015 onward, he had also been responsible for Bayern’s merchandising and licensing.

For all intents and purposes, the work Wacker has done for Bayern in his eight years of service has been highly beneficial for both the club and the brand as a whole. There have also been plans in place to further expand the brand in the North American and Asian marketplaces and beyond. It was very recently that FC Bayern Brasil was officially created on Twitter as a representative of Bayern’s fan base in South America.

Interestingly, and perhaps expectedly, the club really didn’t give much reason as to why Wacker resigned, but with personnel shifts amongst the club’s front office, the writing may have been on the wall.

Another power move from Oliver Kahn?

Oliver Kahn has already taken a lot of initiative ever since he officially became Bayern’s new CEO, taking over for Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. In his first days as the club’s CEO, he had all of Bayern’s employees take a survey to give their thoughts on how they felt the company was run and where positive changes could potentially be made. Naturally, Kahn faced a lot of hurdles in the start of his tenure as CEO due to the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s working incredibly hard to keep everything driving forward.

FC Bayern AHEAD has been Kahn’s first big project, which was designed to help develop strategies for the future of the club and better the fan experience in conjunction with Bayern’s supervisory board. It’s what he referred to as a “holistic club strategy that reduces complexity and provides direction.” At the end of August, he presented at a meeting in front of Bayern’s supervisory board to outline his plan for emphasis on internationalization for the club, with the idea that both he and club president Herbert Hainer would be spearheading those efforts. It’s likely that during that meeting, it was made clear to Wacker that he might not be needed anymore. Rather, Kahn and Hainer would absorb most of that power.

Either way, it’s not known at this point the manner in which Wacker’s resignation came about, or if there’s now any sort of bad blood, but it’s clear that Kahn is very serious with his ambitions and has a specific way he wants to achieve them.