The barely noticed strength of Thomas Tuchel

FC Bayern's year has been turbulent. Only in the final few meters did the club manage to find its inner calm. This is due to a barely noticed strength of coach Thomas Tuchel - and joker Thomas Müller.

If Thomas Müller is doing well, then FC Bayern is also doing well. This rule still applies, even if another has long since been overridden. Namely that Müller always plays. It was once formulated by Louis van Gaal, the Dutch party animal. Van Gaal is long gone in Munich, Müller is still the present. And still a bit of the future. His contract was extended until 2025 shortly before Christmas. And this despite the fact that Müllerthomas is no longer first choice, but just like "the Frauenkirche belongs to Munich", as the inspired club boss Herbert Hainer let it be known.

The fact that FC Bayern have enjoyed a quiet Christmas, with commanding victories against Manchester United, Bundesliga surprise team VfB Stuttgart and VfL Wolfsburg, can hardly be better illustrated by any player than the 34-year-old, who would love to play more but accepts his role without public complaint. Only occasionally does he hint that he would have liked to convince his coach more often to let him play from the start. This coach is Thomas Tuchel and he is someone who does not allow himself to be driven by public debates. His path is his path, and he ignores recommended detours. When he leaves the chosen path, it is out of inner conviction. The fact that he keeps starting small fires only interests him when the really big fire engines arrive.

The cabin is closed again

In late summer, the bosses had had enough. They called Tuchel back, they had had enough of the constant complaints about the squad being too thin. Even the once again powerful patron Uli Hoeneß got in touch from Tegernsee and radioed that this was not particularly clever. But otherwise they let Tuchel get on with it. And sang him a hymn at every opportunity. He fought in very small steps to make the team more resilient and better balanced. And he did this mostly without the mighty Müller.

When he even preferred Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, the topic of Müller threatened to ignite a major storm. As was once the case with former coach Niko Kovač, who saw the icon as nothing more than a stopgap and stumbled over it. He had mismanaged the role of the icon and underestimated its power. Tuchel does things differently. He praises, but promises nothing. As a result, the Thomas Müller wave that piled up remained a media wave. One that found no way to penetrate the Munich fortress.

And even under Julian Nagelsmann, who was supposed to lead FC Bayern into a new era before he had to leave far too early (measured against the common goals) after just under two years, Müller was a big issue. His relationship with the coach was considered strained, and the old striker also had to fight for a place under the young boss, more so than he would have liked. In general, the music off the pitch was far too loud under Nagelsmann. There was the Larifari Leroy Sané, who didn't seem to take discipline very seriously. There was Serge Gnabry, who flew to Paris for a fashion show. And there was the all-pervasive case of Manuel Neuer with all its consequences - including the dismissal of goalkeeping coach Toni Tapalovic and the angry interview.

Tuchel has taken care of all these small flashpoints. Under his direction, the team has become very quiet. He seems to have the dressing room under control. The dressing room that he loves so much, as he said after his first game in Munich. As he spoke, he declared it a sacred place, the protection of which he made a top priority for the coach. Amidst all the turbulence, it almost goes unnoticed that the team has internalized the inner Tuchel. No grumbling gets out, no complaining. Even the moles, who had diligently undermined Nagelsmann's work, are running their noses into Munich granite. Tuchel had promised Hoeneß in a personal conversation before taking office that he would take care of FC Bayern. He keeps his word.

Tuchel plucks the experts

Only the pro-Palestinian postings by Moroccan Noussair Mazraoui caused a stir, more from the outside than from the inside. However, it was a turbulent time in which nothing could be brought under control. Not for a coach. At FC Bayern, however, he was at the forefront from the start. With his complaints about the squad, with his line-ups and (non-)substitutions. He caught and caught everything, didn't let anything into the dressing room and rarely let anything get to his players. He allowed the wildly escalating and absurd expert dispute with Dietmar Hamann and Lothar Matthäus to escalate; the nation's chief critics had accused FC Bayern under Tuchel of no longer being confident, no longer stable and certainly no longer dominant.

Tuchel fumed with rage, repeatedly took the experts to task, acted from above, rejected every offer of reconciliation - and dominated the headlines. It was no longer about the core of the matter, only about the manner. These diversionary maneuvers were otherwise only mastered by one very big man in Munich, the biggest man in the club: Uli Hoeneß. Perhaps this is why the coach and the patriarch are connected on a level that allows them to live as alpha animals in purposeful coexistence.

The experts are not wrong

What Matthäus and Hamann have repeatedly and vehemently emphasized is by no means wrong. The cup defeat in Saarbrücken or the 1:5 in Frankfurt were relapses into times at Säbener Straße that were thought to be long gone. Other games were won due to individual class and not thanks to an outstanding and well-functioning collective. Munich, completely unsettled at the end of the Nagelsmann era and under the leadership of the bizarrely dismissed former bosses Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidžić, had lost themselves - and suddenly found themselves again on matchday 34, when panicked BVB gave them the title from afar. On the pitch, Munich were an ensemble without structure, they lacked leadership and hierarchy. There was no longer any at the top either. Kahn and Salihamidžić had led the club into chaos in terms of communication. They ducked away from important issues or failed to find the right words.

The shaken alphas Hoeneß and Rummenigge took over in the summer and put together what their successors had broken. That took time. And economically, it was a historic decision. With striker Harry Kane, the 100 million euro barrier was broken for the first time, although Hoeneß had long ruled it out. But the courage paid off, with the England captain saving FC Bayern numerous points with his 21 league goals to date and outshining many a performance that would have been difficult to forgive in Munich in other times.

Tuchel also needed time to bring his ideas and the available personnel together, which, according to his version, does not allow for a real six-man. Kane scored (sometimes Mathys Tel too), Sané shone, Jamal Musiala worked his magic, this great triad carried Munich through the first wobbly weeks of the season, the construct around it only slowly came together. Without Müller, with a defense in search of sovereignty and a Joshua Kimmich who couldn't always be who he wanted to be. FC Bayern are still a long way from being the omnivorous "Mia san mia" monster of the past decade, with Bayer 04 Leverkusen the Christmas champions. But things are falling into place, thanks to Müller, because of Tuchel. He had promised Uli Hoeneß that.