Equal to Jupp Heynckes and Zinedine Zidane. Interim coach in November, Hansi Flick has gone in ten months from the status of almost unknown to that of Bavarian legend, leading Sunday Bayern Munich to the second Cup-Championship-Champions League treble in its history.
Win all three competitions in the same season? Only one man had done it before him with the “Record champions“, the old wizard Jupp Heynckes in 2013. But he already had a brilliant coaching career behind him.
Winning the Champions League for his first season on the bench, without any prior experience as a first division coach? A man had succeeded: Zinédine Zidane at Real Madrid in 2016. But “Zizou“drew its legitimacy from his past as an exceptional player.
Flick, at 55, did not have these assets. He conquered his titles only thanks to his charisma as a leader, made of lucidity, serenity and perpetual obsession with excellence. And the circumstances: arrived in August as Niko Kovac’s assistant, he was bombed as an interim coach in early November, after the Croatian was sacked.
There were only a few games left, the time for its leaders to find a suitable successor. But victory after victory, he won.
“Hansi is deeply human”
The “Kaiser” Franz Beckenbauer, triple winner of the C1 and world champion as a player and as a coach, explains why the mayonnaise has taken so well with the stars of the locker room: “Hansi has been with the national team, he says, he knows how to talk to internationals. This is what was decisive. Hansi is deeply human, and that’s exactly what internationals, successful players, appreciate above all else.“
Opinion confirmed by Joshua Kimmich, the pillar of the midfielder: “He has a very good relationship with everyone. For him, we are not only players that he needs for his system, but he sees in us people, and we realize it“.
In fact, Flick’s experience, even though the general public did not know him, played a major role in this success. He was for eight years the deputy of Joachim Löw in the national team, and was as such 2014 world champion (with Neuer, Boateng and Müller).
He had in-depth knowledge of how to prepare for and manage, physically and psychologically, a long tournament with cleaver matches. None of the other coaches in Lisbon could say the same, not even Diego Simeone or Pep Guardiola, great specialists in club football, but inexperienced in tournament matters.
Heynckes, who knew Flick well, had had a brilliant intuition in December: “As a coach, he is a rare pearl (…) Bayern now has the immense chance to be able to have in the long term a coach who can mark his time“, he had said, even before Flick signed any contract.
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Important values
From the outset, the players adhered to his philosophy. “He brought a new tactical aspect and also his mentality, testified in Lisbon Corentin Tolisso, that’s what makes the difference today. He’s a good coach who talks a lot with his players and gives a lot of confidence“.
Thomas Müller, who has seen nine technicians in his long career at the club, is also won over: “Our game had not been so well organized since Pep Guardiola“(2013-2016), he assures,”Hansi Flick has always been a great guy, always very clear in what he tells us. But I didn’t expect him to have the full package at this point to become FC Bayern coach“.
For Löw, the former boss of Flick, it is “this combination of high technical competence and great empathy that makes him such a good trainer“.
“We can all be happy to have chosen Hansi Flick last November and to have trusted him“, dropped the club boss before the final Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, “he gave us back that confidence a hundredfold. He brought back important values in the team and in the club“.
Above all, he brought back a European Cup that all of Bavaria had been waiting for for seven years.
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