Sometimes the very transparent FC Bayern club still manages to keep something secret. In any case, the name Christoph Freund had not appeared in the speculation about filling the vacant sporting director post in the past few weeks.
This may be due to the fact that the 46-year-old Austrian doesn’t seem to fit the requirements profile of the Munich team, where he will start on September 1st. At his current employer RB Salzburg, he rarely had to deal with player transfers of the magnitude that FC Bayern usually carry out. But all the more often with talents that he found all over the world, developed in the club and later sold at high prices. His discoveries include current Bayern players Dayot Upamecano and Sadio Mané, as well as Manchester City’s Erling Haaland.
Friend is well connected
But it is probably precisely this expertise that brought Bayern to Freund when they were looking for a successor to Hasan Salihamidžić. The best players in Europe are now priceless, and the second best often don’t offer value for money. The fact that someone is now coming who is networked with scouts all over the world and who pays more attention to the work on campus could be part of the solution.
Freund started in 2006 as a team manager at RB Salzburg. A new era began with the appointment of Ralf Rangnick as sports director in 2012. The friend who was promoted to sports coordinator first had to be convinced of the German’s strategy. He “looked at him like a car. ‘Ralf, we are a nation of skiers,’ he said,” Rangnick told the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard”.
But then Freund set out to explore the market. When he inherited Rangnick in 2015, he had long since internalized the model. Even more impressive than the successes in Freund’s era as sports director with the Austrian series champion is the transfer plus of 400 million euros.
Christopher Meltzer, Munich Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 14 Christopher Meltzer, Munich Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 10 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 3
A year ago Freund turned down an offer from Chelsea. When Bayern came knocking, it was clear to him “that I would like to take on this new challenge”. Coach Thomas Tuchel had nothing to say about his future boss “because it wasn’t my decision” – and he had never spoken to him. Doesn’t sound like he’s super excited about the collaboration.
