Tobias Schweinsteiger still remembers, with a little chuckle, the day Pep Guardiola called on him to show the rest of the star-studded Bayern Munich side how it’s done.
The older brother of midfield stalwart Bastian was a forward at the club’s fourth-division second team, coached by Erik ten Hag at the time, but often trained with the seniors in pre-season and during international breaks.
Guardiola once instructed the winger from the opposite flank to the ball that he should stay wide at all times. However, Xherdan Shaqiri often moved inside to join Guardiola’s attack. “He was taken off at half-time, the manager wasn’t happy,” Schweinsteiger, now a coach at third-division VfL Osnabruck, laughs. “I came on in his place and made sure my shoes were white from touchline paint.”
Guardiola frequently devised such “extremely specific” routines for individual players, the 40-year-old says, “to teach them certain moves he wanted to see, irrespective of anything else.” Ten Hag was a little different, more concerned with collective patterns. “Sometimes he took four or five players to the side to work on certain game situations. However, most of his tactical drills were XI vs XI. You straightaway got a sense that this guy would become a great manager one day.”
2013 to 2015 were golden years for football know-how at Sabener Strasse, with the world’s best manager at the helm, a highly-rated Dutchman in charge of the youngsters below and sporting director Matthias Sammer watching over the close cooperation of both sets of coaches.
As early as 2009, the ex-Borussia Dortmund and Germany midfielder had tried to sign Ten Hag, then the assistant coach at Twente, as Germany’s under-21 manager during his spell as sporting director at the German FA. A mutual friend introduced them.
