Julian Nagelsmann joining Bayern Munich: What do we know?

It’s a near-certainty, at this point, that Julian Nagelsmann will be the Bayern Munich manager beginning July 1, 2021. With negotiations reportedly happening throughout the day on Monday, it appears that Bayern have reached an agreement in principle with Nagelsmann and RB Leipzig to complete the move.

Nagelsmann grew up in the small Munich suburb of Landsberg am Lech and grew up a fan of Bayern. He and his family built a house in the outskirts of Munich a couple of years ago, and his wife and kids live there year-round while Nagelsmann stays in Leipzig coaching the team. In a major way, this is a “returning home to take your dream job” situation.

Back in 2017, former Bayern sporting director Matthias Sammer said when Nagelsmann was linked to a possible move to Munich to take over after the sacking of Carlo Ancelotti, “Time will tell. And if everything goes its usual course we can safely assume that it (Nagelsmann’s transfer to Bayern, as a coach) will happen sometime.”

And, while we’ve seen a lot of reports come in from Germany all throughout the day, let’s break down exactly what’s going on with Nagelsmann’s reported move.

Transfer Fee

According to this report from Bild+, Bayern have agreed to pay Leipzig a €15 million transfer fee for Nagelsmann with bonus clauses pushing that north of €20 million depending on titles won by Bayern over the next few seasons. Abendzeitung is reporting that the total could top €23 million.

The €15 million is equal to what Chelsea paid FC Porto all the way back in 2011 for the services of Andres Villas-Boas; however, the bonuses in the Nagelsmann move put it over the top. This is the third manager transfer fee to hit at least €10 million in the last two years: Leicester City paid Celtic €10.5 million for Brendan Rodgers in 2019, and Sporting Lisbon sent €10 million to Sporting Braga for Ruben Amorim.

There have been two other big manager transfer fees paid in the Bundesliga this year alone: Borussia Mönchengladbach are paying €7.5 million for Adi Hütter, and Borussia Dortmund are paying Mönchengladbach €5 million for Marco Rose.

Length of Contract and Salary

Nagelsmann will reportedly (from the same Bild+ article) be signing a five-year contract. This was to be expected with Bayern paying such a high fee for his services. Tz is reporting that Nagelsmann’s salary will be roughly equal to Hansi Flick’s €8 million per season. Currently at Leipzig, Nagelsmann’s salary is around €3 million per season.

Who will be a part of his coaching staff?

According to Abendzeitung, nothing is guaranteed at this time, bit it’s likely that both Miroslav Klose and Danny Röhl would follow Flick to the DFB. Nagelsmann would likely bring his top assistant from Leipzig, Moritz Volz, with him to the club. He will also likely push to keep Hermann Gerland, goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalovic, and Holger Broich in their current positions.

Bayern nearly signed Nagelsmann back in 2015.

Nagelsmann’s youth coaching career was catching eyes throughout Germany during the early 2010s. Uli Hoeneß was one. According to then-Bayern technical director Michael Reschke, Hoeneß was excited about bringing Nagelsmann, who had just been promoted to Hoffenheim’s U-19 coach at the time, over to do the same job at Bayern.

Dietmar Hopp, however, refused to even discuss letting Nagelsmann leave the club. Hoeneß accepted the decision and moved on. Nagelsmann was shortly promoted to be a first-team assistant at Hoffenheim and then head coach, and the rest is history.

When will they announce it?

The big question is, of course, “when will all of this be made official?”

Well, according to various reporting from German outlets, Bayern do not want to announce anything publicly with Nagelsmann until after they’ve come to an agreement with Flick and/or the DFB. While many have tried to make this situation a lot more antagonistic than it is, both sides are looking to an amicable end to the relationship. It’s very possible that everything is official before RB Leipzig takes the field on Friday in the DFB-Pokal semifinal against Werder Bremen.