The thoughts of FC Bayern Munich were actually somewhere else. On Wednesday evening, the men were eliminated in the quarter -finals of the Champions League against Inter Milan. Which meant that they had to solve themselves from the romantic idea of playing the final Dahoam in Munich and, in this ideal way, to say goodbye to Thomas Müller in this ideal way. And while the club at its headquarters in Säbener Straße was busy processing this game and its consequences, the branch from FC Bayern Campus from the north of the city surprisingly sent a farewell message.
Alexander Straus, as head coach of FC Bayern, will stop women at the end of the season, “at his own request”, So the club announced it on Thursday morning. In the summer of 2022, Norwegian from SK Brann Bergen, which was unknown in Germany, came as the successor to Jens Scheuer and had extended his contract in May 2024 after winning the second championship without defeat by one year to 2026. Now the contract was dissolved prematurely “to devote itself to a new challenge”. His last official working day will be May 31st.
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Straus “made an invaluable share in the development of footballers,” said Bavaria’s sports director Max Eberl. “He will say goodbye to the big goal in Munich.” This farewell should even become a historical one. Straus could not only be the first coach in the history of FC Bayern to win the Bundesliga three times in series, but also the first one with whom the Munich women celebrate the double of the championship and DFB Cup. They had missed it in 2024.
The league leads the team significantly after the 3-0 last Saturday in the top game near Frankfurt, three game days before the end the lead over VfL Wolfsburg is eight, and nine points on Eintracht. In the cup final against Werder Bremen, the Munich women are clear favorites. And so you could get two titles within a few days if you were supposed to succeed on April 27 in the home game against Freiburg and on May 1st in the cup final in Cologne. Overall, the joint title collection would at best comprise five trophies-at the beginning of the season, FC Bayern had brought the DFB supercup against Wolfsburg for the first time since 1997. So why the end of successful cooperation?
“We lifted women’s football at FC Bayern together on the next stage,” says director Bianca Rech
The reasons, it seems, should be due to his private life this time. At least Straus indicates this in his farewell words. Working at Bayern had “challenges in the family area,” said the father of two children, whose family stayed in Norway. Straus is considered a trainer who is constantly dealing with football up to small details, digging in tactics. Who attaches great importance to conversations with the players and rather discusses a variant in his offensive playing style, which is designed for possession and control, too often and too extensively. Empathetic, but demanding. One who wanted to meet FC Bayern’s claim directly, but it was not tired of emphasizing that he was concerned with a process in the sense of a success story that justified the men. The 49-year-old should have been the past three years accordingly: “I knew that it would be hard if I would say goodbye to the club, which has become such a large part of my life.”
Under Straus, an impressive series of 44 point games without defeat from October 30, 2022 to October 5, 2024. With it, FC Bayern wanted to develop and establish its national supremacy. In this endeavor, Straus also benefited from various transfers of highly affected players. However, his handwriting in the development of the team was definitely recognizable, even if it did not extend internationally beyond the quarter -finals in the Champions League (2023, 2025). This season, record winner Olympique Lyon was too strong for the injury -plagued Munich women. “We lifted women’s football at FC Bayern together on the next stage,” said Bianca Rech, director of the women’s football. “It was always Alex ‘big goal, and we achieved that together.”
FC Bayern has not yet announced the task of further consolidating the team’s standing in Germany and closing the international gap. The search for coach number 14 has probably just started since the beginning in 1970.
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