Hitzfeld to Leave Bayern

"I informed the club about my decision to leave this summer three weeks ago," Hitzfeld told the German sports news agency SID on Wednesday, Jan. 2. "But I'll still be trying to win as many titles as possible in the next half-year."

Earlier Bayern commercial manager Uli Hoeneß had offered a typically gruff remark to the daily Bild newspaper.

"You'd be safe to assume that [Hitzfeld] will not be staying," Hoeneß said. "But he will be here until June."

The 58-year-old Hitzfeld is a legend in his own time, the only coach ever to have won the Champions League with two different clubs. But his tactics have come in for criticism from some Bayern potentates -- most prominently chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge -- and his current spell in Munich hasn't lived up to expectations.

Disappointing returns

Hitzfeld was brought in last season to replace Felix Magath -- the man who succeeded him at the end of his previous Bayern tenure in 2004. But Hitzfeld was unable to get Munich back into the top three last year, and his won-lost record was much the same as his predecessor's.

That was supposed to change this season, after Bayern went on a club-record spending spree to bring in stars like Miroslav Klose, Franck Ribery and Luca Toni. Bayern currently top the table but are level on points with Bremen, a club with nowhere near Munich's financial resources.

And Bayern's fortunes in the league are slipping. The team scored only a single goal in their last three Bundesliga matches in December -- hardly a satisfactory return on summer investments topping 70 million euros ($100 million).

A team of two halves

The squad is rumored to be split into a German faction around Klose and a foreign one around Ribery and Toni, neither of whom seem particularly keen on learning the language of the country where they're employed.

And Hitzfeld has failed to get very much out of young stars like Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski. Meanwhile veterans like Valerian Ismael and Willy Sagnol have left the club or said publicly that they'd like to.

There's no clear indication of who might succeed Hitzfeld, but Dutch national coach Marco van Basten is rumored to have been put up for discussion.

Meanwhile, Hitzfeld could take over as the national coach of his second-home, Switzerland, or become a television commentator.