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By Martin Graham | 20th Mar 2023
Bayern Munich manager Julian Nagelsmann has spoken out about the alleged mole in his dressing room.
In the course of Nagelsmann’s two seasons as Bayern’s manager, the German giants changed their decade-long 4-2-3-1 identity for a more diverse pattern of play. The change has yielded great results for the club.
Recently, the tactical documents explaining the process of the change and how the young manager is looking to set up his team and the specific instructions for each player and position were leaked to German outlet BILD, who made the documents public. The club have been dealing with the fallout of having their tactics revealed to German media, who have gone on to spread it all across Europe.
Nagelsmann is unhappy about the incident and spoke out against the mole when met with questions about the incident in a recent chat with the press.
“It bothers me a lot. The person who transmits this harms each of the players, he is not the objective,” the 35-year-old manager said. “What is the person who transmits this looking for? What are you waiting for? I don’t see what his motivation could be, beyond facilitating the task for the adversary.”
Nagelsmann then spoke about how he and the club are determined to fish out the culprit while speaking to the difficulty they will encounter in doing so.
“Moles are protected species. Every time you drive through the countryside, you see 80,000 moles and you can’t get rid of them. Their search is very, very difficult. I hope that this person can’t look in the mirror because it’s not fair.”
The leak could not come at a more dangerous time for the German giants, who have had it tough in the past few weeks in the Bundesliga. They face Bayer 04 Leverkusen on Sunday for a chance to go two points clear at the top of the table, the closest the German title race has been in a few seasons.
They also face the hurdle of Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League quarter finals, after the European football gover ing body drew both clubs against each other. In that game, they will be defending against Erling Haaland once again.
The striker has gotten much better at goal-scoring since moving to England but Bayern legend Lothar Matthaus has urged the club not to fear the Norwegian in their upcoming battle.
However, with Nagelsmann’s tactics now leaked – the same ones the manager claims were crucial in freezing out Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe in their round of 16 clash against Paris Saint-Germain – it remains to be seen how they will deal with Haaland and City’s threat.
Martin Graham is an MFF sports writer
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