ALate on Sunday morning, Jan-Christian Dreesen walks into the press room of FC Bayern Munich’s football arena, sits down on the podium and fiddles with the microphone. It’s only 17 hours since the club announced in the middle of their championship celebrations in Cologne that Dreesen would replace CEO Oliver Kahn. He’s about to say his first words as CEO. And when you talk to people who worked and still work with him, you get the feeling that he is where he wanted to be right now.
“First of all, a hearty “Grüß Gott” and good morning from me,” says Dreesen and begins to talk. About himself, about FC Bayern. Later he will say: “If you get the chance to become CEO of the most important club in Germany and one of the most important clubs in Europe, then that’s something that happens very, very rarely or not at all in life.” It’s the chance Of his life. But it is also an opportunity that he himself no longer reckoned with.
This summer, Dreesen wanted to leave FC Bayern, for which he has been CFO since February 2013. He can’t do it with Kahn, who has chaired the board since 2021. he wants to go But then the crisis on Säbener Straße came to a head. Finally, Uli Hoeneß, the man who is still in charge in Munich, decides that Kahn has to go. And in the past week it’s going really fast. Dreesen for Kahn – this is how the supervisory board decides in an online meeting on Friday.
A “Lord of Numbers”
On Sunday morning in the arena, Dreesen says: “Communication is important to me and I would like to come back to one another more. That’s really important to me: for each other and with each other. And there should be a little bit of joy as well. In my opinion, it starts at the top. ”It is not his only statement this morning that must be understood as a criticism of Kahn.
So now Jan-Christian Dreesen, 55 years old, is to lead FC Bayern Munich through the next two seasons. That is what is contractually agreed. He should ensure that the mood on Säbener Straße gets better again. And what about the biggest and most important decisions? What about sports? Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who was CEO from 2002 to 2021 and was elected to the supervisory board on Tuesday, will take care of this again for the time being. And yet they want Dreesen by their side because they know they can rely on him. But who is this man that Hoeneß and Rummenigge trust?
Dreesen is an experienced banker, a “master of numbers”, as it is often said of analytically thinking people like him. But Dreesen is not just a factually arguing manager, he can become very emotional, as his feud with predecessor Kahn showed.
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