It is a mark of how far Harry Kane, the England centre-forward, has come to terms with life at Bayern Munich that, as he embarks on his third season there, he’s having public differences of opinion with Lothar Matthaus, legendary former skipper of Bayern and Germany. It happens, sooner or later, to most senior figures in the Bundesliga.
Matthaus, whose strong views are aired widely across German media, took issue with statements made by Kane after Bayern’s victory over Stuttgart in the domestic Super Cup.
Kane, short of team trophies in his otherwise excellent career, wants to win more with Bayern and, talking to reporters after the Super Cup, made, by his diplomatic standards, a sharp remark about the thin back-up in Bayern’s squad.
“This is probably one of the smallest squads I’ve played in,” said Kane, applying pressure to the club’s hierarchy to stay active in the last few days of a transfer window in which there have been notable departures from Munich as well as a significant attacking addition, Luis Diaz, captured from Liverpool.
“There’s still time. Decisions could be made by Max [Eberl, the sporting CEO] and Christoph [Freund, director of sport],” added Kane.
Matthaus disagreed, insisting that if only Bayern made more confident use of their up-and-coming talents, the strong first XI would feel they had ample cover.
Kane, leading goalscorer in the Bundesliga in both his Bayern seasons so far, can count up a number of allies who have departed in the last two months.
Leroy Sane, with whom he developed a strong partnership, especially in 2023-24, moved to Galatasaray. Kingsley Coman has left for Al Nassr after 10 years supplying crosses from Bayern’s wings.
There’s also the fact that because of injury, the brilliant Jamal Musiala, who combines as effectively as any Bayern player with Kane, will miss at least the first three months of 2025-26.
And, for the first time in 17 years, Thomas Muller, the great conjuror of penalty-box space and furnisher of assists, is not part of the first-team squad, having elected, at 35, to see out his playing days in the American MLS.
Not least of the consequences of the talkative Muller’s leaving is that other senior players will have to spend more time in front of post-match microphones, as Kane did, with his firm message to his bosses.
His veiled criticism may yet resonate should Bayern, in the course of a long, fixture-heavy campaign they hope endures deep into the Uefa Champions League’s later phases, start to look weary.
Matthaus’s view is that Bayern, and head coach Vincent Kompany, are slow to promote youthful talent – and that it’s a habitual problem. Adam Aznou, the 19-year-old Morocco left-back was among those sold this summer, to Everton. Mathys Tel, 20, joined Tottenham Hotspur, another in a line of young departures that includes Kenan Yildiz, who left Munich in his teens and has since thrived at Juventus.
Naturally, 17 other clubs in Germany’s top tier regard Bayern’s squad as anything but thin. The champions, who get the season under way against RB Leipzig on Friday are clear favourites to retain a league title they have let out of their grasp only once in the last 13 seasons.
Erik Ten Hag, older and wiser
At next summer’s World Cup, Germany’s national team, determined to do better than their group-phase eliminations in 2018 and 2022, will entrust their fate to a head coach, Julian Nagelsmann, who will not turn 39 years old until the tournament is over.
Nagelsmann, whose fast-track career has already included a stint in charge at Bayern Munich and two other top-division clubs, is still unusually young for an elite manager. But he has long been the flag-bearer for the German fashion for promoting tyro coaches.
Of the 18 managers preparing for the 2025-26 Bundesliga campaign, five – Bayern’s Vincent Kompany, RB Leipzig’s Ole Werner, Wolfsburg’s Paul Simonis, Freiburg’s Julian Schuster and Hamburg’s Merlin Polzin – are 40 or under.
If Nagelsmann’s successes, notably at Hoffenheim and Leipzig, were one factor in emboldening other club presidents to trust the up-and-coming, so was the astonishing impact made by Xabi Alonso, appointed to his first senior coaching job by Bayer Leverkusen when he was only 40.
In Alonso’s first full campaign in charge, 2023-24, Leverkusen went through the entire domestic season unbeaten, interrupting Bayern’s long domination of the league title and winning the German Cup. His Leverkusen also made the final of the Europa League.
Alonso’s departure for Real Madrid, in June, has left the next man in his seat with a high bar to reach. But that man, Erik ten Hag, is no young greenhorn. He comfortably trumps almost all his new Bundesliga peers in terms of experience. At 55, the former Ajax and Manchester United manager, would be the oldest head coach in the top tier but for Werder Bremen having taken on Horst Steffen, who is less than 12 months his senior. And Steffen will be making his first ever appearance as a head coach on a top-division touchline this weekend.
Ten Hag, by contrast, has spent the last decade in the highest divisions of his native Netherlands and England. He will need that experience. Lessons learnt at United, where a glorious past tends to shadow every modern manager, should be useful at post-Alonso Leverkusen. And the habits of Ajax, where Ten Hag oversaw regular rebuilds as stars moved on, may be invaluable. The exit of so many leading lights of Alonso’s brilliant Leverkusen – Florian Wirtz and Jeremie Frimpong to Liverpool, Jonathan Tah to Bayern – means Ten Hag needs to be resourceful.
Dortmund’s fraternities
Five summers ago, a teenager with the name Bellingham on the back of his Dortmund jersey marked his competitive debut in Germany with a goal. The rest is history – Jude Bellingham was still in his teens when he joined Real Madrid from Dortmund for close to €100m – and a lasting legacy. Jude's rapid development at Dortmund is an example the club are proud of.
And it’s been too tempting an example to resist for Jude’s talented younger brother, Jobe Bellingham, who joined Dortmund from Sunderland in July. He will likely make his top-division bow, as a 19-year-old, this weekend, and on the evidence of lively preseason outings for his new club, the midfielder might just make the inevitable comparisons with superstar Jude work as a stimulus and not as a burden.
His head coach, Niko Kovac, should have a perfect understanding of the sibling dynamic too, a sensitivity about what it is to chart a similar professional pathway to a talented brother. Kovac’s assistant coach at Dortmund is one Robert Kovac, who, as a player, followed his older brother into the Croatia national team where they were teammates for the best part of a decade, and played in defences just behind midfielder Niko, who is a year older, for Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich. Dortmund is the fifth club they have worked together at as coaches.
Hamburg … at last
It has been an agonising wait. Hamburg, one of the historic giants of German football, and European club champions in the 1980s, are back in the highest division after seven years of exasperating struggle in the second tier. There, they finished just a place off possible promotion four times, and lost twice in the play-offs.
Their chances of avoiding a swift return to Bundesliga 2? Slim, if you judge them on their preseason – three successive losses to opponents from Denmark, Austria and Spain – or the difficulties they had in beating fourth-tier Pirmasens, 2-1 thanks only to goals in stoppage and extra-time, in the German Cup last week.
