Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in the ZDF sports studio: Uefa is to blame, not FC Bayern Munich

Losing this game at Eintracht Frankfurt in the afternoon wasn’t a bad strategy for Bayern. Suddenly, the ZDF sports studio had another large topic that it had to plow with Munich’s CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge: the sporting crisis and the title fight that was supposedly exciting again. And since you can’t arbitrarily extend the airtime on television even very late in the evening, there was a little less room for the other construction site issues that Rummenigge had created with his statements in recent weeks.  The y are clever, the Bavarians.

 The  trip to Qatar for the Club World Cup in the middle of the pandemic, Rummenigge’s omissions about possible vaccination privileges for football professionals, the petty dispute over Bayern’s night flight ban from Berlin airport – the Bayern boss has recently collected a lot that made him the number one stimulus in Germany Football has become.

 The  now 65-year-old has said a lot in the past when the season was long. But there were still Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeneß in the club, and when in doubt they were the better suppliers of keywords and keywords. Now the two are only working on an honorary basis, and Rummenigge is the one who is left and polarizes.

“We have a lot to talk about,” said moderator Jochen Breyer, welcoming the evening’s guest, and they did. Because the presenter Breyer left the stage to the journalist Breyer that evening.

 The  ZDF man consistently addressed the issues, went into hand-to-hand combat despite all distance measures and at least tried not to let Rummenigge get away so easily.

What is not so easy, the Bayern boss has been giving television interviews for 45 years, his first appearance in the sports studio dates back to 1976. Rummenigge has mastered the evasion technique, even if he does not have to endure critical questions every day. Why are the clubs traveling all over Europe despite Corona and why RB Leipzig is playing a home game in Budapest? It’s all a decision by Uefa, says Rummenigge with a shrug. As if the word of FC Bayern had no weight there.

His statements about vaccination? He was “apparently misunderstood by some”. All he wanted to say was that “if there was enough vaccine, it would be good if footballers had themselves vaccinated.” Breyer pointed out that Rummenigge originally did not say exactly this restrictive sentence.

“Human rights violations are not a culture”

Every now and then the questioner had an impact, even if Rummenigge might not have been so aware of it. Breyer asked: “Where has it gone, the humility?” Rummenigge immediately claimed that the humility was still there, one was happy to be able to play in the Bundesliga at all, and then added “with a hygiene concept that was for the whole world , was also exemplary for the USA «. And when Rummenigge repeatedly denied that football had a special role, and Breyer then pointed out the European Cup marshalling yard, Rummenigge said: “Unfortunately, this gives the impression that football has a special role.”

When it came to Qatar, Breyer finally had the final say. Why does FC Bayern still maintain its partnership with the emirate, despite all human rights issues? Rummenigge said that there was a different culture and a different religion in the emirate. He got no further because Breyer intervened with the succinct and true sentence: “Human rights violations are not a culture.”

Rummenigge couldn’t think of anything more than to mention that Qatar had now introduced the minimum wage “faster than here in Germany,” and that the situation there has improved considerably since football relations with Munich existed. Breyer: “Why is the rich FC Bayern not doing more morals?” Rummenigge: “Football cannot improve the world as a whole.”

Bayern have fought one or the other battle on ZDF in the past.

 The  dispute between Uli Hoeneß and Christoph Daum in the sports studio at the beginning of the nineties by the qualified lawyer Bernd Heller, with the second Udo Lattek and Jupp Heynckes at their side, remains unforgettable, a battle of words that temporarily came to the brink of a tussle fight. Or the interview by Harry Valérien with Paul Breitner at the 1982 World Cup by the swimming pool, where the only thing missing was the two of them pushing each other into the water. But that was a long time ago, and if you’re being honest, there haven’t been many conversations of this kind after that.

 The  exchange of blows on Saturday evening did not reach this dimension from then. But Breyer has done a lot for the reputation of the sports studio. Incidentally, for his own as well: In the previous year, many critical football fans had resented him for not having pounded Hoffenheim’s financier Dietmar Hopp in the recap of the events surrounding the almost abandoned game against FC Bayern.

At the end there was, as is normal in the gym, shooting on the wall. Rummenigge competed six times and never scored a single time. Somehow that fit into the picture. Breyer would have sunk two or three that evening.