For years, football fans have criticized Bayern Munich and the German national team for making decisions for political reasons rather than starting the best players, either for the national team or for Bayern itself.
Dortmund and other fans around the Bundesliga cried this out more than a decade ago to Joachim Low over several high-profile national team snubs in favor of seasoned Bayern Munich veterans, pointing this out as reasons why Germany did not win a major trophy before the 2014 World Cup triumph.
Nowadays, the German national team is more mixed with underperforming Bayern Munich players usually axed, though, at this past Euros, many were puzzled why Leroy Sane got starting chances when he clearly wasn’t 100 percent.
The controversy lately has been more focused on Bayern Munich giving continued starting opportunities to a cadre of severely underperforming, big-name German players at the expense of Bayern’s overall performance, which is an issue that came to the fore over the past couple of seasons.
Before Germany’s match against the Netherlands, German national team manager Julian Nagelsmann, who most recently coached Bayern Munich, was asked about the performances of Dutch midfielder Ryan Gravenberch.
The young center midfielder has been one of Europe’s best to start the 2024/25 season, in juxtaposition to his time at Bayern, where he was signed from Ajax in 2022 but almost never played before being sold to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool last summer.
Nagelsmann’s response was, “”It was complicated for him at the time because we had Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka in midfield. I was the new coach at FC Bayern and it wasn’t easy to put players from the German national team on the bench. For Ryan it was a new situation that he had to get used to because he had almost always played from the start at Ajax before.”
Essentially, Nagelsmann is admitting that he didn’t give Gravenberch as many opportunities to develop as a Bayern Munich transfer investment in midfield because he was forced to start Joshua Kimmich and Leon Goretzka.
The latter, in particular, had come under fire in previous seasons for poor performances without any consequence. Now, Bayern Munich are trying to push Goretzka out of the club, but, previously, he was a mainstay in the starting lineup despite not being particularly good since the 2019/20 season.
Bayern lost out on one of the best young midfielders in the world for political reasons, and Gravenberch isn’t the first young talent to be eschewed in favor of veteran German players.
It looks like new coach Vincent Kompany and sporting director Max Eberl aren’t as interested in doing this, as Bayern shifts into becoming more of a meritocracy as 2025 begins.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.