Yet another Uli Hoeness managerial failure?
Ja! ­ Amazing. Uli Hoeness, a man still set to­ "retire" as active day-by-day manager of FC­ Bayern in two months (very doubtful!) has again failed­ to deliver on a player he touted as the best of the­ best of Bayern's extensive South American scouting­ network. Isn't the Brasilian defender Brenno also­ another "failure?" Considered the Don (in­ English Dean) of the German game, Hoeness is the one­ man most given attribution for FC Bayern's 25-year­ dominance of the German league. Well, Uli (he loves­ the spotlight way too much as well as his egotistical­ mouth) is perfect proof that one only needs to be right­ about 50% of the time when spending millions to sign­ players to play in Munich. Spectacular recent failures­ include German players like Sebastian Deisler (check­ out his new biography), Jan Schlaudraf (now with­ Hannover), and these are what come to thought after no­ reflection. Show me player lineups over the last 10­ years and I will show you howlers like the Iranian­ player Hashemian. It is truly a miracle that FC Bayern­ dominate the way they do; it can only be explained that­ other Bundesliga managers are even worse at player­ development and selection. So....the moral to this: ­ Let this offer courage to upcoming want-to-be managers.­ I am serious. I am waiting for a truly astute manager­ to step up and put the bigwigs in Munich, Hamburg,­ Schalke, and even Wolfsburg (what, in Wolfsburg, 79­ players gone through in the last 3.5 years? Kind of­ like Tottenham Spurs?)to shame. What private firm or­ company could ever succeed with such abysmal rates of­ quality new employee/new player talent­ selection/recruitment? True, the chemistry of winning­ football is more than equations, computer data, or­ stats or X's and O's on whiteboards; people are­ complicated things. But the fundamentals of what makes­ up a pro-flight player(s) can't be that complicated­ to know, find, and recruit for a man who h