OTHER EVENTS

The Leader Column

Authoritative, independent and hard hitting, the weekly column on the business of football tackles some of the biggest issues of the week. Click here to sign up for your weekly fix from the Leaders in Football.

Keir Radnedge: Bayern and the Global Recession

4:30pm Thursday, 7th January 2010

As a player Christian Nerlinger was good but not great. He worked hard and consistently for Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, Rangers and Kaiserslautern, which was enough to earn six appearances in the German national team. He was always a support player, however.

Now Nerlinger is applying the qualities of consistency, realism, determination and practical common sense to his new position as sports director of 21-times record champions Bayern.

Nerlinger, 36, moved up in the reshuffle which followed Franz Beckenbauer's retirement as president last autumn. Uli Hoeness quit as general manager to take the presidency and Nerlinger moved up as sports director from his previous role as team manager (a role about logistics and administration rather than team selection and tactics).

His first significant statement in that new role has been to warn the stars of 'FC Hollywood' that even football must heed the lessons of the global recession and not live beyond its means. The wages free-for-all is over.

Nerlinger says: 'We will be looking out to reduce wage levels. Pay rates have gone through the roof. So we have to take a new approach. So do the players who should no longer think that a contract extension automatically means more money.'

Bayern spent around £80m last summer on team strengthening - including £60m alone for German striker Mario Gomez and Holland winger Arjen Robben) - but now, says Nerlinger, 'we have reached the last frontier.' German clubs have always been under far tighter scrutiny than neighbours in France, Italy, Spain and England. No foreign investor can own a majority shareholding and the Bundesliga's accounts policing system has been in operation far longer than other such control mechanism.

Coincidentally, Nerlinger was speaking up just as Manchester United were reported to be considering a massive rights issue to help seal the black hole created by the Glazer family's leveraged buy-out and just as Manchester City were declaring the third-largest annual losses (£92m) of any club in the English Premier League.

Bayern's war on wage hikes has reduced their prospects of holding on to France forward Franck Ribery beyond the summer. Ribery's contract does not expire until the summer of 2011 but Bayern, if they want to recoup any of the record 25m fee from 2007, will need to sell him this coming summer. Nerlinger insists: 'We will talk with Ribery and his people at the appropriate time and we will fight to keep him.'

Hoeness has refuted reports of an informal agreement to sell Ribery to Real Madrid. This, ironically, can only increase speculation that he might end up with one of the debt-management specialists in Manchester. If that is the price for financial sanity then Nerlinger is perfectly willing to accept it.

Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS).