Bayern Munich legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge backs Vincent Kompany through thick and thin

Coaching at Bayern Munich is no easy task…

Bayern Munich legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge knows that each coach at the club can relate to the saying, “heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

Current head coach Vincent Kompany is no different. Every decision gets analyzed (or even over-analyzed), but Rummenigge says each manager knows that kind of critique comes with the position.

“I understand this criticism. But when was the most successful period at FC Bayern? From 2012 to 2021. Various coaches were involved. They almost all had the same DNA, they wanted to play attacking, attractive, possession-dominant football. With this DNA, we have won a collection of titles like never before at FC Bayern. I believe that the players are grateful to Vincent for letting them play the way they had this fun and this success,” Rummenigge told kicker’s Georg Holzner. “There was a sentence from Pep Guardiola that I love: We once drew 1-1 in Leverkusen, but we should have won by a big margin. Afterwards, the players sat in the dressing room, they were angry. Then Pep came and said: ‘Congratulations, today things have clicked. Today you understood me — and I understood you’ — and then came this sentence: ‘It’s not the result that determines quality — it’s the quality that determines the result. You’ll see, we’ll win an awful lot of games now’ — then we won 18 games in a row.”

As for the discussion surrounding some of Kompany’s personnel decisions — like favoring Joshua Kimmich and Aleksandar Pavlović over João Palhinha in the central midfield — Rummenigge is content to let the coach make those decisions.