Bayern Munich scouting department under fire after disappointing results in the market

According to a report by TZ, Bayern Munich want to revamp the scouting department at the club. New sporting director Christoph Freund, the man who signed Erling Haaland for RB Salzburg, is going to be in charge of discovering players who can make the step into the first team BEFORE they end up costing a hundred million euros on the market.

Apart from Alphonso Davies and Jamal Musiala, the bosses are disappointed with the number of top level signings being made at the youth level for Bayern Munich as of late. Right now only Mathys Tel is a prospect for the fist team, with youngster Franz Kratzig only recently being drafted onto the bench as Davies’ understudy in the absence of Raphael Guerreiro.

Freund, who was in charge of (and very successful with) talent identification in the Red Bull system at Salzburg, is expected to improve the existing system to give Bayern an edge in the transfer market. He is expected to take charge from September.

But wait, there’s more!

Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images

While this is all very interesting, the TZ article also gives some interesting background information about Freund’s appointment. Apparently, Bayern Campus director Jochen Sauer had an important role in bringing Freund to the club, having been his boss at Salzburg from 2012 to 2017. Sauer is a close confidant of Uli Hoeness, and worked closely with Uli’s brother Dieter in his roles Hertha Berlin and VfL Wolfsburg.

Dieter Hoeness is a consultant (read: player agent) who knows the youth sector very well — TZ claims that he, Sauer, and Freund form a clique that will allow Uli Hoeness to once again wield large amounts of influence over the signing of new players at Bayern Munich.

So, as we can see, there’s always another angle at Bayern Munich. Even the signing of RB Salzburg’s sporting director is a move rooted in a tangled web of connections and personal relationships. Now this is not to say that Freund will be bad at his job — however it does paint a picture of the complicated beast Bayern Munich is behind the scenes.

Meanwhile, coach Thomas Tuchel was displeased by the announcement of a sporting director scrutinizing his work. That’s a little funny, since at Chelsea he wanted a new sporting director, and Todd Boehly tried to get Christoph Freund to take over that role. It didn’t happen and Tuchel got sacked, reportedly for his failure to work with management in the role of identifying transfer targets.

Football can be a very strange thing.