The Bavarians made a massive mistake deciding to continue with a coach that has quite clearly lost the dressing room
After his players had suffered an inexplicable second-half blackout at the Stadio Olimpico three weeks ago, a shocked Thomas Tuchel argued that it wasn't Lazio who had won the game – but Bayern Munich who had lost it.
It's become a recurring theme of the coach's post-match press conferences, with Tuchel arguing again after Friday's 2-2 draw with Freiburg – which essentially ended the Bavarians' Bundesliga title hopes – that his team's wounds had been once again self-inflicted.
"We actually played very, very early, like it was the 85th minute and we were 1-0 down," he told , visibly mystified by what he had just witnessed. "I don't think it was a matter of will or effort. We just played mindlessly for the first half-hour and were punished for it.
"We started attacks before things had got going at all, lost the ball in the forward movement and invited them to counter-attack. We played with no structure at all, were far too ill-disciplined and weren't in our correct positions at all. It was partly harakiri."
The reference to ritualistic suicide by disembowelment rather unsurprisingly provoked an emotional response from not just the German media, but also the club. Such violent imagery did little to lessen the mounting tension at the Allianz Arena ahead of the Champions League second-leg clash with Lazio on Tuesday night.
The use of 'harakiri' wasn't entirely without justification, though, given Bayern really are to blame for killing their own hopes of success this season.
GettyNever-ending 'horror movie'
On Wednesday, February 21, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen announced that the club would part company with Tuchel at the end of the season. It was an utterly bizarre decision, an incredibly strange reaction to a historically bad run of results that appeared to confirm a disconnect between the coaching staff and the players – which was so perfectly illustrated by the argument between Zsolt Low and Joshua Kimmich after the embarrassing Bochum defeat on February 18.
Indeed, by that stage, it was clear that Tuchel had no answers to Bayern's many problems. During the shock loss to Lazio on February 14, he could be seen furiously waving his arms on the touchline, trying desperately to get his team to play with greater pace and urgency. His impassioned instructions elicited no meaningful response, with Bayern unable to regain the belief that had inexplicably disappeared during the second half of a game that they had been dominating.
"I can't explain it," Tuchel confessed afterwards, "because we told the team to maintain their intensity and be even braver going forward, but we seemed to lose face at the start of the half."
Tuchel looked lost and, that same night, midfielder Leon Goretzka compared the situation to a never-ending "horror movie" – so why did Bayern opt to prolong the agony?
Advertisement(C)Getty ImagesDressing-room divide
Obviously, their top target to take over, Xabi Alonso, won't be available until after the end of the season. It's a similar story with the alternatives. Bayern were also unconvinced with some of the interim options (understandably in the case of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer!).
However, the idea that announcing Tuchel's departure might somehow galvanise the squad was naive at best – and absolutely idiotic at worst. Because Tuchel's standing at Bayern is not remotely similar to that of Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool – or even Xavi at Barcelona. This is not a club united by a shared desire to ensure that an immensely popular figure secures the winning send-off he so richly deserves.
The fact that Dreesen had to "explicitly" call on the players to give "the maximum possible" for the remaining months of Tuchel's tenure tells you everything you need to know about the scale of the dressing-room divide.
Getty Images'You have to have the respect of the players'
So, what did Bayern think was going to happen? Did they really expect the news of Tuchel's imminent exit to bring everyone together – or generate a wave of emotion that would carry the team to Champions League glory?
That was just never going to happen. As legendary former Bayern boss Jupp Heynckes told , "As a coach you have to have the respect of the players, otherwise you won't achieve anything. Nothing changes in the relationship between the coach and the team, no matter what the contractual situation looks like."
Amusingly, we're now hearing that Tuchel could be immediately relieved of his duties if Bayern fail to overturn their 1-0 first-leg deficit against Lazio, which obviously begs the question: if there was so little faith left in the manager – both at boardroom and dressing-room level – and his prospects of seeing out the season were dependent upon European success, why persist with an arrangement that obviously wasn't working?
It's not like Bayern look capable of winning the Champions League anyway. Even if they get past Lazio, a side struggling horribly in Serie A, they'd have little hope of progressing past one of the tournament's top teams in the last eight – because confirming Tuchel's departure has solved nothing.
Getty Images'We did things we had never even talked about'
Bayern did manage to win their first game after the news broke – but only thanks to an injury-time winner from Harry Kane against RB Leipzig – and, on Friday evening, they were held to a 2-2 draw at Freiburg that means they are now 10 points behind Alonso's unbeaten Bayer Leverkusen with 10 rounds remaining.
Could the curse of 'Neverkusen' strike again? Highly unlikely, but not impossible. The real question is, though, would Bayern take advantage of any Leverkusen collapse? And the answer is, absolutely no chance! This is not a team capable of playing with any conviction, coherency or consistency for 90 minutes right now.
They may have finished strongly in Freiburg, but the first half was a disaster, and Tuchel effectively accused his players of self-sabotage by ignoring his pre-match instructions. "We had a defensive training session and a video analysis session yesterday. Things were clearly communicated," he told . "But we did things that we had never trained before, that we had never even talked about before."
Then came the killer "harakiri" line, which was not well-received by his employers. Again, though, one has to ask, what exactly did they expect?
