So much trust was rare. When Julian Nagelsmann was introduced as the new coach of FC Bayern in the summer of 2021, the 33-year-old not only received an unusually long contract of five years until 2026, but was also released from RB Leipzig with a proud 25 million euros and with anthems Introduced hymns of praise for Bayern bosses.

A year and a half later, the Nagelsmann era is already over. Despite the long-term contract and what is sure to be a lavish severance payment, the Bayern management decided to make a hard cut during the international break, which surprised even the club's long-established companions. After all, President Hainer Nagelsmann had expressly praised him just a few days ago, and a change of coach so shortly before the possibly decisive top game against leaders Borussia Dortmund did not seem opportune.

As improbable as such an expulsion seemed before, it seems so consistent in retrospect. It was a tenure full of bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns, full of irritation about a coach that most people at Bayern had imagined differently: much more confident, self-confident and structured. However, the coach missed all of that. He played his part in the fact that the most successful striker in Bayern history, Robert Lewandowski, left the club unnecessarily. He allowed conflicts like the one about goalkeeping coach Topalovic to escalate unnecessarily.

And hardly a week went by in which Nagelsmann didn't thin-skinned himself about the Munich media landscape, which was always a bit too excited, about the classic wave movements between euphoria and harsh criticism. He couldn't have imagined "what extreme black-and-white thinking there is sometimes," he complained recently. However, his predecessors from van Gaal to Ancelotti were also lifted up to heaven and sent to hell without being in complaining about it all the time.

Nagelsmann was often out of control. In between, he had to apologize again and again for gaffes like the wild rabble in the referee's cabin after the kick against Gladbach. And finally, various fashionable extravagances irritated as well as the curious idea of ​​turning onto the training ground with an electric roller board, as if he were a 15-year-old high school student on his way to an internship.

But he would have been forgiven for all that if he had let the squad play at a consistently high level. But the holy days of modern football, such as the comfortable home win against PSG in the Champions League, were followed by oaths of revelation, such as the away bankruptcy in Leverkusen, after which sports director Salihamidzic raged, not without reason: "That wasn't what Bayern Munich means. We got a team, who was still playing on Thursday, overrun."

It was already clear to observers that the international break would be a turbulent time for Nagelsmann. Especially since the much more profound leadership crisis at FC Bayern has become apparent in recent weeks. It was recently completely unclear who actually has what to say in Munich. The pale club president and string puller Herbert Hainer? The stoic CEO Olli Kahn? Or the stray president Uli Hoeneß, who has been supplying the media with slogans for months. Nagelsmann's expulsion is now a clear sign of the Kahn-Salihamidzic duo that they are putting the balance of power at FC Bayern back in order.

Whether that will succeed, however, depends very much on the new man, on Thomas Tuchel, who has been in talks with FC Bayern for years. In the top game against Dortmund and in the Champions League against Manchester City, Tuchel is doomed to win in order to be able to justify the personnel shift internally and externally. In other words: Such a bet is risky, but makes sense. Because Tuchel is a real main prize for every club. A mature personality has joined professional excellence in recent years, the sharpness and relentlessness that made life difficult for many a player in Mainz and Dortmund has given way to a cosmopolitan serenity. Anyone who has successfully completed stations like PSG and Chelsea does not have to fear the journalists in Munich, nor internal power games.

That distinguishes him from Julian Nagelsmann. So it could be that an era is beginning in Munich that really deserves the name.