Parting shot
Bayern boss Heynckes plots downfall of former club Real
Jupp Heynckes is plotting the downfall of his former club Real Madrid in today’s Champions League semi-final first leg and take the next step to leaving Bayern Munich with another treble.
Heynckes, 72, has already won the Champions League as manager of both clubs.
He steered Real to the title in 1998, then Bayern in 2013, a season the Germans finished with a treble.
At an age when his contemporaries are busy playing bingo and looking after the grandkids, Heynckes is relishing a highpressure European showdown.
“It’s a cracker — a gigantic meeting in a positive sense,” said Heynckes.
“These are two teams with a great tradition in European football, who play and love attractive football. It’s a difficult draw for both sides.
“For a coach who’s old, it is something exceptional for me to come back on the football stage and to have the privilege of another semi-final. Then, to play against Real as well is great.”
Bayern are the only club left in the Champions League who can still win a treble.
They wrapped up a sixth straight Bundesliga title three weeks ago and will face Eintracht Frankfurt in the German Cup final on May 19.
If Bayern lift the Champions League trophy in Kiev on May 26, Heynckes, who turns 73 on May 9, will make history as the oldest coach to win the European Cup. He would eclipse the record of 71 years, 231 days set by Raymond Goethals when Marseille won the Champions League in Munich in 1993.
And winning the trophy for the third time would be his perfect parting gift to Bayern.
Heynckes already set a new Champions League record in the quarter-finals.
Bayern’s 2-1 first-leg win at Sevilla was his 12th straight victory as coach in the competition, a run that dated back to his previous spell in charge in 2012/13.
Only Louis van Gaal, with Barcelona and Bayern, and Carlo Ancelotti, at Real Madrid, had managed double figures.
A gamble that paid off
Regardless of the result against Real, Heynckes has showed his class in turning Bayern’s fortunes around since he returned for a fourth stint at the club in October. He replaced Ancelotti, who was sacked after a 3-0 drubbing at Paris Saint-Germain in the group stage.
It was a gamble by Bayern to turn to him, but club chiefs Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge needed a replacement who already knew the club and had a proven track record.
Yet, tending the garden and walking his dog Cando had been Heynckes’s main tasks in the four years since he last quit Bayern. He had quit all football after winning the treble of Champions League, Bundesliga and German Cup in 2013, being replaced by Pep Guardiola.
When Heynckes returned on a deal until the end of the season, Bayern were five points adrift of then-leaders Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga.
Discipline was tightened, training was intense and playing time was distributed evenly among a star-studded squad.
The effect was immediate as Bayern won 23 of their next 24
It’s a cracker — a gigantic meeting in a positive sense. These are two teams with a great tradition in European football, who play and love attractive football. It’s a difficult draw for both sides.”
Jupp Heynckes | Bayern Munich manager
It’s not an issue for me, it may have been a bit unfair, but you should not quarrel too much with the past. [Ronaldo] is an unbelievable athlete, you can see that when he scores goals and pulls off his shirt.”
Jerome Boateng | Bayern defender
games. “You have to look back to last October, we did not think we were going to be champions with five games to spare and to be semi-finalists [in Europe],” said Heynckes. “I feel like I’ve reached [the players]. We work together as hard as we can and without selfishness.”
Despite his stunning achievements with Bayern this season, Heynckes remains humble.
“I got into the lift this morning in my hotel with an old couple,” he said recently.
“I was holding a Bayern Munich bag, so the lady asked ‘oh, are you a Bayern Munich fan?’ — ‘Yes, sure’, I replied.”
Not being recognised was no problem, but Heynckes poked fun at ex-Bayern midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who now plays for Chicago Fire.
“They were definitely American, even though Schweinsteiger had told me, ‘oh boss, everyone knows you here [in America]’.
“They definitely don’t,” Heynckes said with a grin.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema were once the untouchable trio, but only one of Real Madrid’s feted ‘BBC’ can be sure of their place against Bayern Munich today.
Ronaldo has dragged Real into the Champions League semi-finals with, even by his standards, an astonishing goal glut that includes 22 in 12 games, and at least one in each of his last 11 matches in Europe.
“It’s impossible to completely stifle Ronaldo, we can only stop him as a team,” Bayern defender Jerome Boateng said on Monday.
“An attacker cannot be more complete than him — left foot, right foot, head, he controls everything and in front of the goal, he’s a machine”.
But while Ronaldo has enjoyed a fresh spurt in his new role of predatorial centre-forward, his two partners have found their responsibilities reduced ahead of the first leg at the Allianz Arena.
Bale’s decline began first. After returning from injury earlier this year, he was on the bench for both legs against Paris Saint-Germain and the first leg against Juventus.
In the second leg, he did start, only to endure the humiliation of being taken off at half-time.
Benzema’s fall has been more surprising given the striker had been Zinedine Zidane’s preferred partner for Ronaldo, his work rate and supply highly valued despite the Frenchman’s lack of goals.
But Benzema’s link-up play has slackened, thrusting that dry patch — one goal in 10 games and only four in 24 — more clearly into view.
‘A little blip’
“He does suffer a little bit, when he misses chances he suffers but the solution is easy,” Zidane said. “He has to keep working. It is just a little blip he is in at the moment.”
Bale and Benzema’s dip has coincided with Ronaldo’s golden run, a parallel that may not be entirely coincidental.
Ronaldo in a Real team centred on playing to his strengths is nothing new, but as the Portuguese has grown narrower in his scope, perhaps his teammates have had to sharpen their focus in providing service to him.
Zidane has often deployed 4-4-2 in the biggest games this season, with Lucas Vazquez and Marco Asensio preferred on the flanks for their defensive discipline and willingness to send crosses into the box.
Bale is not viewed as conscientious enough in the wide midfielder role while Benzema’s key selling point was his link-up play. When that broke down, his appeal diminished.
“I don’t see anyone looking sad,” Zidane said.
“I said to the pair of them the other day, they would both like to score more goals but everyone is working well.
“It is always going to happen in a side like ours, there are players in good form and in the team and playing well.”
Even if Isco is selected, it means Real are likely to line up with one of their more modestlooking attacks for a crunch Champions League tie.
“I’m not worried,” Zidane said last week. “It’s true that in the last two games we have had chances and we have not taken them but now we are going to have a game on Wednesday away from home.
“We are going to try to score and what we have to do is to think positively and realise that this is football anything can happen, no matter who is playing on the pitch.”
Benzema’s fall has been more surprising given the striker had been Zinedine Zidane’s preferred partner for Ronaldo despite the Frenchman’s lack of goals.