Herbert Hainer (lr), President of FC Bayern Munich, Jan-Christian Dreesen, new CEO, and Michael Diederich, future Deputy CEO, on the balcony of the town hall in Munich.
Image: dpa
Jan-Christian Dreesen replaces the “Titan” Oliver Kahn at FC Bayern. It is a personality that shows the change in the football business.
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.
