Oliver Bierhoff responds to recent criticism from Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

Last week, Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had thrown a fair share of criticism in the direction of German national team managing director Oliver Bierhoff. Rummenigge wasn’t happy with Bierhoff suggesting Hansi Flick could be the next Die Mannschaft manager and said that it was “disloyal” to Joachim Low.

Rummenigge also took a direct shot at Bierhoff, claiming that he feels he tries to make himself out to be the “great modernizer” at the DFB, when in reality, in Rummenigge’s opinion, Beirhoff has been at least partially responsible for a lot of the problems that have plagued the DFB for the past decade.

On Sunday evening on ARD’s “Sportschau,” Bierhoff admitted that he was shocked at the verbal attacks from Rummenigge (Tz). For starters, he said, “I was also surprised because the last conversations with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge were very good and we have a good relationship. Bierhoff went on to say that when making his assessments of the DFB and of himself, Rummenigge should “stick to the facts for now.”

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Bierhoff went to defend himself by saying he’s only been in charge of the German national team since 2018 in his role of team director and that the power brokers of German football need to collaborate more.

“We have to tackle problems together,” he explained.

Rummenigge had expressed his concern at the steady decline of Germany producing a high number of younger talents as well, which is something the DFB was well known for prior to winning the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. “Das Reboot” completely revamped the country’s youth academy systems and yielded large crops of talents as a result.

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Bierhoff also made a point of saying there are other managers and directors across the country that are far more involved than Rummenigge in “The Project Future” in conjunction with the DFL.

“The ‘Project Future’ was designed together with the DFL. Managers who are much deeper into the topic than Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, such as Fredi Bobic and Max Eberl, were involved. The time of letting muscles play is over,” Bierhoff said.

However, Bierhoff did agree with Rummenigge’s assessment about a significant drop in the amount of younger players rising through the ranks to become prominent players for the national team.

“A clear trend shows that in 15 years there will be fewer talents,” Bierhoff said, suggesting that it was more or less unavoidable.