Julian Nagelsmann denies contact with Bayern Munich

All indications are that Tottenham Hotspur have identified their top long-term target to replace Jose Mourinho when if he gets sacked in the coming months weeks days. That target is RB Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann. The only problem: he’s almost certainly the most high profile manager available in the offseason and there are significant hints that he’s also a top candidate for the managerial opening at Bayern Munich, soon to be vacated by Hansi Flick.

Nagelsmann has said that he’s open to leaving Leipzig this summer and has interest in managing in England, and barring anything crazy happening the biggest Premier League club to have a managerial opening is very likely going to be Tottenham. That’s good! Unfortunately, the general sense is that Nagelsmann might be using Spurs as a stalking horse to land the Bayern job, and may have already had conversations with the Bayern brass. That’s bad.

However, according to football super-journalist Fabrizio Romano, that may not necessarily be the case. Romano tweeted recently that Nagelsmann denied any contact with Bayern, either directly or through his agents.

Now, to be clear that absolutely doesn’t mean that he’s not interested in the job. In fact, if Bayern wants Nagelsmann I think it’s almost certain that they’ll get him, possibly even before Spurs get around to sacking Mourinho, and regardless of any positive feelers Spurs have put out towards his camp to this point. Coming out with a statement saying that there “were no talks” doesn’t mean that a) there actually haven’t been any talks (people lie), or b) there won’t be talks in the near future.

Nagelsmann would probably be about as slam-dunk of a hire as Tottenham could make in this current climate, but that still doesn’t mean that he’s going to end up at Spurs. Tottenham have for a while now been in a position where they are in the tier just below gargantuan clubs like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, the Manchesters, etc. Suffice it to say that if Bayern wants Nagelsmann they’ll probably get him, unless he decides that he really doesn’t want the job. That’s a possibility! Just not a very good one.

Tottenham may want to start looking down their internal list of alternate candidates in the meantime. They probably should also get around to sacking Mourinho one of these days too. That’d be a good idea if they want to actually attract someone to take over.