Rummenigge reveals phone call with Guardiola before Bayern Munich hired Kompany

The laborious search for a new head coach at Bayern Munich in the summer concluded with the appointment of Vincent Kompany. The 38-year-old made the big jump from recently relegated English side Burnley to the German record Champions Bayern Munich. 

As reported earlier, Pep Guardiola had a big role to play in this appointment as he happily recommended the Belgian coach to Bayern’s Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who had sounded him out for advice.

Vincent Kompany, during his time at Manchester City, played 62 games under Pep Guardiola. In that period, the two of them enjoyed a lot of success — most notably winning the 2017–18 and 2018–19 Premier League titles. Now as a coach, Kompany’s style of expansive football - characterized by high-pressing, high defensive line and possession maximization, takes a lot of influence from Pep’s philosophy which also has the same tenets.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in an exclusive interview with Kicker further revealed that it was upon Sporting Director Max Eberl's suggestion that he talked to Man City manager Pep Guardiola about the prospect of appointing Vincent Kompany as the head coach of FC Bayern. The two of them had a lengthy discussion over a phone call wherein they went into great detail about the Burnley coach.

"I told Pep that I needed an analysis that was authentic and honest. We then spoke on the phone for almost two hours. To cut a long story short: he said he was 100% convinced that Vincent Kompany was absolutely the right coach for FC Bayern."

- Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

Pep’s assuring words on his former player surely must have meant a lot to Rummenigge and the rest of the board at Bayern as Kompany was eventually appointed as the head coach.

The former CEO also mentioned in the interview how he believes that Bayern ended up with the right person even after enduring multiple rejections during the long search.

"I think Kompany will be a lucky find for us. Sometimes fate helps you: the number of rejections that Max Eberl, unfortunately, had to deal with meant that we may have ended up getting exactly the coach we needed for this team. There are two decisive factors: the team enjoys the style of football - and so do the fans. Football has to be fun. That's exactly why kids play football in the street. And you can see that in our team too."

- Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

Julian Nagelsmann, Ralf Rangnick, Oliver Glasner, and Xabi Alonso, were some of the big names on the list of candidates that Bayern attempted to sign as Head Coach before they arrived at Vincent Kompany. The Belgian had five years of experience as a first-team coach (3 seasons at Anderlecht and 2 seasons at Burney)

So far this season, Kompany has lived up to the billing as Bayern have played an attractive and attacking brand of football to a largely successful degree. Rummenigge also praised this style of play in the same interview.

Whilst applauding Kompany’s work so far, the former CEO also alludes to the inferior quality of football played under former coach Thomas Tuchel. 

Bayern may have found their way back to attractive football but the season is still young and several new challenges await Kompany as more games roll in. It will be intriguing to see how the team manages to navigate through that while still adhering to their play style.