FC Bayern Munich will not offer a job contract to its former defender Jérôme Boateng, 35, who trained with the team on a test basis this week. That has been clear since this Friday. Why won’t Boateng stay?
The statement that the club published on its website on Friday evening states that the personnel situation in central defense has eased: “Considering all aspects, FC Bayern has now decided not to sign Jérôme Boateng. At the same time, as a deserving player at the club, he was offered the opportunity to continue to stay fit at FC Bayern. Jérôme Boateng was in good physical condition.”
It has been immediately discussed in the German football public since Boateng, currently without a club, was photographed with the team for the first time last Sunday morning on Säbener Strasse. Shortly afterwards, it was announced on Bayern’s website that Boateng would “continue to train in the coming days (…)”. It was the club that – as sports director Christoph Freund later said – contacted its former player.
The DFB Cup game in Münster was highlighted in Munich as the trigger. In September, coach Thomas Tuchel deployed both Leon Goretzka and Noussair Mazraoui in their unfamiliar role in the middle of the defense – as the three actual central defenders (Matthijs de Ligt, Minjae Kim, Dayot Upamecano) missed the game with minor and major injuries . And because de Ligt is still missing, Freund and Tuchel then looked for a solution to FC Bayern’s sporting problem – and found: Boateng.
On this Friday afternoon, when FC Bayern’s final decision in the Boateng case had not yet been made, according to Thomas Tuchel, the coach said in the press conference that the loss of the three central defenders represented an “absolute emergency situation”. But he then also said a sentence that indicated why not everyone in Munich was apparently in favor of Boateng being the solution to the sporting problem: “We will decide this together, it doesn’t just have a sporting component, that’s why it’s important that we decide this together.”
And so to the other component.
The discussion that took place this week in the German football public, but most likely also on Säbener Strasse, was not only about the football player Jérôme Boateng, but also about Jérôme Boateng, who was sentenced in November 2022 . At the time, the Munich I Regional Court considered it proven that Boateng attacked and insulted his former girlfriend Sherin S. while on vacation.
He was sentenced to a fine of 1.2 million euros for two counts of assault and insult. In September 2023, the Sixth Criminal Senate of the Bavarian Supreme Regional Court decided on the appeals against this judgment – with the result that the judgment was “overturned and the proceedings were referred back to the Munich I Regional Court for a new hearing and decision”.
The Bavarian Supreme Regional Court agreed to the appeal by both the defendant and his lawyers because an application for bias against the judge had been rejected with his participation. But also the public prosecutor’s appeal because the regional court had not clarified whether the bag that Boateng was said to have thrown at his girlfriend at the time was a dangerous tool, which was then considered dangerous bodily harm with a minimum sentence of six months in prison would have been punished.
Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 7 Christopher Meltzer, Munich Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 3 Christopher Meltzer, Munich Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 7
It is not yet clear when the court proceedings will be repeated. If FC Bayern had decided on an employment contract with Boateng, it could have been that he would have been an employee of FC Bayern at the time. That was – in addition to the public pressure that arose and might have been increased by possible fan actions in the home game against SC Freiburg on Sunday (5.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on DAZN) – a risk that the club took in its decision certainly taken into account.
