FLICK’S FLOCK
Munich manager’s collegiate approach is reaping rich dividends
THERE has been plenty of discussion about Hansi Flick’s silver bullet, given that his Bayern Munich team submitted Barcelona to that most brutal of assassinations last week, opening up a route to Champions League glory in Lisbon where they face Lyon in a semi-final tonight.
The story of the Brazil set-pieces, from Germany’s golden summer of 2014, suggest that there really is no need to go looking for one.
Flick was assistant to Germany’s national team manager Joachim Low at the time — looking for a way to help in a World Cup quest which became substantially tougher once Marco Reus had broken his ankle and been left at home, robbing the side of pace. To the initial scepticism of many in the squad, Low included, he pressed the idea of devoting 40 minutes of a pre-match training session to set-pieces, even creating two three-sided teams, each of which would take three corners and three set-pieces each.
The German players had always been averse to this because set-piece training is notoriously tedious, leaving some with nothing to do but ‘scratch their balls,’ as Per Mertesacker later put it. But Flick, remembered by the players for the black tactical ‘logbook’ he carried with him throughout that campaign, made it his job to get players to buy-in. Defenders like Mertesacker and Philipp Lahm were also consulted on game plans and team selections. ‘This was new,’ Mertesacker said. ‘They told us: “We want your input and your trust. Are we picking the right people”? It meant they could be sure that everything would make sense to the rest of the squad.’
A source close to the squad that summer insists this was Flick’s influence. ‘There was a collegiate way about it all that created huge spirit and belief,’ he says. ‘He was willing to ask what others thought; to look to others for the answer. There was not the usual hierarchy you expect in football.’
When Germany scored from their first corner in the 11th minute of the iconic semi-final which saw them annihilate Brazil 7-1, Flick barely registered a reaction. Headed set-piece goals had already seen the team equalise against Ghana in the group stage and beat France in the quarterfinal. The trophy, of course, was carried back to Germany.
As a New York Times profile of Flick put it after Bayern’s relentless pressing game saw them eviscerate Barcelona 8-2, Flick’s secret is that there is no secret. Just an uncomplicated and highly analytical approach to how best to deal with the opposition, which players to pick, and a self-effacing way of managing them. ‘Fundamentally humane,’ as the 2014 colleague puts it.
It perhaps helps that Flick has had a hinterland. He turned down an offer to join Stuttgart to complete an apprenticeship as a bank clerk at the age of 18. When his career, which peaked as a midfield water-carrier for Bayern, ended early through injury, he opened a sports shop with his wife. He’d spent only five years as a head coach before Bayern — self-imploding under Niko Kovac amid dressing-room strife and marooned at fourth in the Bundelisga table after a hammering at Eintracht Frankfurt — promoted him from the assistant manager’s job on an interim basis back in November.
It felt like a stopgap solution at the time; a pause before the squad was dismantled and a new one assembled from the wreckage. Iconic figures like Manuel Neuer and Thomas Müller, out of the team, seemed relics of an old order.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the club’s chairman, did not provide much indication that Flick would be hanging around. The public debate coalesced around whether Bayern could afford Mauricio Pochettino’s wages.
In the circumstances, what happened next has been little less than miraculous: 31 wins from 34 games and more than 100 goals, taking Bayern to a domestic league and cup double with the personnel Flick inherited. Muller and Jerome Boateng, whose shared history with him in the national side undoubtedly helps, are reborn. Alphonso Davies has reached another level.
Muller compares Flick’s approach to former Bayern manager Pep Guardiola, though where Europe is concerned the 55year-old stands on the brink of taking the club to a level which the Catalonian could never reach. Bayern reached the Champions League semi-finals in each of Guardiola’s three seasons at the club, yet when it came to the ultimate tactical test over 180 minutes against the continent’s elite, they categorically failed.
Guardiola might say that a one-off match was a comparative luxury he never enjoyed in Bavaria. Three times he lost away to Spanish opposition in semi-final first legs and could not make up the deficit on home soil.
But Flick’s side blends defensive rigour with a relentless pressing game in a way Guardiola’s version did not.
Bayern, whose only triumph in Europe’s elite competition since 2001 came against Jurgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund in 2013, tonight meet the French side they defeated in the 2010 semi-finals — a year when Inter Milan defeated them at the last hurdle.
Buoyed by a campaign which had seen them put seven goals past Tottenham and Chelsea before the dismembering of Barcelona, it is hard to see anyone impeding them now.
Rummenigge, of course, insists this was all part of a subtle plan.
‘Bayern’s future coach is Hansi Flick — and hopefully he will remain so for a very, very long time,’ he said ahead of tonight’s match. ‘He has brought back important values to the team and the club.’