Berlin (AFP)
The fans insult the sporting director, the bosses are furious with the coach, but all these beautiful people will commune with joy on Saturday if Bayern Munich wins on the road to Mainz (3:30 p.m.) and wins a new league title. 'Germany.
The 31st title in its history, the ninth in a row, reaches out to the Bavarian giant, who is ten points ahead of Leipzig with four days remaining.
For Munich to be sacred, the gap with Leipzig must remain the same after this 31st day.
If they did not win on Saturday, they would still have a chance to uncork the beer on Sunday, if their pursuer did not achieve a better result than them against Stuttgart (3.30pm).
Already man of the week for European fans (with his colleague from Paris Saint-Germain Nasser Al-Khelaïfi) for refusing to join the dissident Super League that twelve other big European clubs have tried to launch, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the president of the club's executive board, could store yet another trophy in Bayern's cabinet on Saturday.
In the process, the strongman of Bayern will have to burst the abscess caused on April 17 by his coach Hansi Flick, who publicly announced, live on television, his intention to slam the door at the end of the season, without going to the end of his contract.
- Lewandowski, the return -
In one weekend, the great Bayern will therefore juggle between its two nicknames: "Rekordmeister", which means in German "holder of the record of league titles", and "FC Hollywood", which has been attached to him for years at each of his psychodramas between stars.
For Saturday's game, the injury returns of Robert Lewandowski, Leon Goretzka and Serge Gnabry are good news.
Mainz, still struggling to maintain it, does not seem to be able to prevent Bayern from being crowned.
But this weekend, the pressure won't just be in the mugs.
The internal situation is more than tense.
It is no secret that Flick's departure is linked to his differences with sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic.
The coach accuses "Brazzo" of having weakened the team with a bad recruitment last summer, and to let David Alaba and Jérôme Boateng leave at the end of the season, two pillars of his eleven type.
During the week, the supporters entered the game. Very attached to Flick, who has become an icon of the club since his cup-championship-Champions League treble last season, they launched a petition to demand the dismissal of Salihamidzic.
- Online hate -
As of Thursday, more than 70,000 fans had signed it.
The sporting director and his family are targeted by hate messages on social networks.
And still, the camera avoids manifestations of hostility in the gallery that could have gone wrong.
Club president Herbert Heiner has personally stepped up to ask fans to calm down.
"We condemn personal attacks in the strongest terms," he said on Wednesday.
"We understand that a coach would preferably like to have a workforce of 30 high-level stars [...] but we have the coronavirus and have to reckon with a loss of income of around 150 million euros", a he added, to justify Salihamidzic's policy.
At a pre-match press conference on Friday, Flick himself tried to put out the fire: "Despite everything that has opposed us in recent weeks, (these attacks) are something I absolutely disapprove of," he said.
The chances that Flick will stay in Munich are infinitesimal, especially since he is seen as the favorite to take over from Joachim Löw as Germany coach after the Euro this summer.
His leaders have promised to meet him face-to-face "after the Mainz match".
The atmosphere of the meeting will be less heavy if Flick arrives there with a German championship title as a starting gift ...
© 2021 AFP