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By Martin Graham | 24th Mar 2023
German outlet BILD has reported that Bayern Munich have parted ways with 35-year-old Julian Nagelsmann and have replaced him with former Borussia Dortmund manager Thomas Tuchel.
The incident comes as a shock to the former Red Bull Leipzig manager who claimed that the news was only a rumour until Thursday night when it became official. Nagelsmann will no longer be at the Bavarians’ grounds when the international break ends and the season resumes in April.
Instead, the team will return to meet Tuchel, who until September 2022, was the manager of Chelsea Football Club in the Premier League. The 49-year-old was sacked by the Premier League side just seven league games into the 2022/23 season. The new owners of the club made him the first casualty of their ongoing overhaul of the club and he has been without a management job since that time.
Tuchel will return to Germany as Bayern Munich manager against the club he last managed in the country, Dortmund, per reports.
The sacking of Nagelsmann also comes as a shock to observers. Since taking over in July 2021, he has won a Bundesliga title and two German Super Cups. He achieved this with a 71.4 percent win rate (60 wins in 84 games) but a lot of those wins have come with some difficulty.
Prior to his sacking, Bayern struggled to stay afloat in the ongoing Bundesliga season and were recently overtaken by Dortmund in the standings. The side led by Edin Terzić is only a point ahead of them in the standings, but that outcome is a result of serious struggles to finish games off for the majority of the ongoing season.
However, there were no signs that the club were preparing to let him go, making the decision one of the weirdest of the ongoing season.
Transfer insider Fabrizio Romano claimed that the decision to let the 35-year-old go was being mulled over for a while and that Tuchel was already lined up as his replacement pending the official confirmation. In the coming days, the former Paris Saint-Germain manager will be signing the contracts that will see him take over the German giants’ dugout for the rest of season and beyond.
Reports have already emerged of Nagelsmann making the switch to the Premier League to take over from Tottenham Hotspur manager Antonio Conte, whose job is also on the line during this international break.
Martin Graham is an MFF sports writer
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