Christoph Freund’s internal promotion at Bayern Munich hinges on key player negotiations

Christoph Freund is only just a little over a month into his tenure as sporting director at Bayern Munich, but there is now already serious talk of the club hiring Max Eberl to become board member for sport. Eberl was let go by RB Leipzig as they felt he was not committed to his contract there due to the heavy interest from Bayern.

As things stand now, Bayern’s executive and supervisory boards do not want to make a concrete decision on Freund or Eberl until the middle of next month. The supervisory board is set to have their next meeting then. There are a few moving parts, but they ultimately need to be able to figure out whether or not they will keep Freund on as sporting director and also promote him to board member for sport, or if they will opt to hire Eberl for the executive board role.

Per information from Sport Bild (via @iMiaSanMia), a lot of the decision making from Bayern’s hierarchy will hinge on how Freund winds up handling contract negotiations for key players in the squad. Namely, Leroy Sané, Alphonso Davies, and Joshua Kimmich’s contract situations will be closely monitored and Freund will have to do what he can to try to convince the players to sign extensions. All of their current contracts at the club run through June 2025, so this fall and winter will be a crucial period in terms of trying to get their long-term futures with the club sorted.

For Kimmich and Sané, the situation might be a bit easier than it will be with Davies, as the pair of players have expressed a great deal of loyalty to Bayern and have rubbished recent links to other clubs. For Davies, though, Freund might need to do a lot more convincing as his agent has publicly not ruled out potentially leaving Bayern before his contract with the club expires.

Regardless of what happens, it is more than likely that Freund would stay on as sporting director even if the club decides to hire Eberl to be the board member for sport. Before he was sacked last spring, Hasan Salihamidžić had occupied both roles, as he had been promoted to the executive board back in the summer of 2020.