The Bundesliga starts on Friday and Bayern are favourites again but are also at the crossroads with a need to renew at the top
It was so fiery, so wild, so pugnacious that it felt like a last stand. As Bayern Munich’s president, Uli Hoeness, and chief executive, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, faced down the media at their Säbener Strasse base in October last year, the floor was genuinely taken aback. The champions’ big two tag-teamed in a broadside against their stunned audience, with Rummenigge threatening journalists with “mail from our media lawyer” in future before Hoeness took up the baton to lay into what he described as “disrespectful reporting”.
It may indeed prove to have been a last stand, or close to it. Bild’s Christian Falk – one of those taken aim at in that extraordinary press conference last autumn – reported last month that Hoeness will not stand for re-election in November and will retire, something that Bayern have not denied, with Rummenigge telling Bild Am Sonntag a few days later that Hoeness’s wish to discuss his future internally before explaining himself in public “should be respected”. Rummenigge plans to step down from his own role when his current contract expires in 2021.