Shock around Olimpico as Cañizares joins Bayern
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Santiago Cañizares – who led the club to a great second spot finish in the 2015/16 season – has joined Bundesliga champions Bayern München. The German outfit finished first last season under leadership of Italian manager Fabio Capello. They finished first with great dominance, creating a 26-point-gap with numbers two Borussia Dortmund.
Cañizares is seen as a manager who lets his team play attacking football, and he has received many plaudits with this attacking football. Now he has a chance to prove himself at a very big club, having to take over from Capello, who resigned after the end of last season. Before joining Roma during the 2014/15 season, Cañizares managed Valencia, where he got them second in his first season at the club. When he left for Roma, he was also in second.
In addition to winning the Bundesliga last season, the club also reached the final of the Champions League, where the team got knocked out by Mourinho’s Chelsea. The years before were less fruitful, as under fellow Spaniard Pep Guardiola the club managed to finish second twice, with Dortmund finishing above Bayern twice.
Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummeniggewas very pleased with the club’s new manager on his first press conference: “We at Bayern believe that Cañizares was the best choice, as he has already proven that he is a great manager in the past three seasons. He lets his team play great football, and that is exactly what we want to see here at Bayern. Although we’ve already got a great squad, we’ve decided to give the new manager a transfer budget of around 100 million Euros and a wage budget of 3.5 million.”
With the arrival of this new manager, quite a lot of changes are expected. Cañizares reportedly wants to switch to a three-at-the-back formation, and he wants some young talents to join his club. Also, he wants to get several old, unneeded players out of the squad. Examples of these old players are Schweinsteiger and Ribéry, who haven’t played a lot of matches lately, but they still cost the club a lot of wages.
The manager attended an interview with us after his official presentation.
“Hello Santiago, welcome to Germany!”
“Thank you, München is a great city!”
“What do you make of your squad at the moment?”
“I think that we’ve got a superb squad, and we don’t need many new faces. I feel we can challenge for every prize that we can possibly win this year.”
“What do you expect of this season?”
“Quite a lot, I think that we can win the Bundesliga, DFB Pokal and Champions League with this great squad that we’ve got at the moment.”
“Have you already got plans for the transfer window?”
“Yes, I’m planning on bringing in some players, and I’m looking to sell some.”
“Thank you for answering these questions, we wish you the best of luck at Bayern!”
“I’ll do my very best to take Bayern to an even higher level, and I hope to have many great years here. Thanks for the kind words.”
