The FC crew criticise Carlo Ancelotti after Bayern Munich's 3-0 humiliation at Paris Saint-Germain.
Bayern Munich had come to prove a point in Paris on Wednesday night, to show themselves and the wider public who they were and where they stood. Inadvertently, they did just that.
"What we saw today was not FC Bayern, I think we can all agree that," the club's ashen-faced executive chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said at the midnight banquet in the team hotel. "It's important that we bounce back quickly and demonstrate that we are the team that has been sensational in Europe and [the Bundesliga] alight in recent years." Translation: Bayern are miles away from the performance levels of recent times. And they're not quite a team, either.
The shock about this sad state of affairs would have been felt more on Wednesday night if the club hadn't half expected it. The many problems PSG exposed in such brutal fashion at the Parc des Princes have been internally known for quite some time.
Bayern's board were fully aware that Carlo Ancelotti was not exactly obsessed with detailed tactical work and favoured a low intensity training regime. They realised that one half of the 2013 treble winning team had come to end of its cycle and would be difficult to replace due to the explosion of transfer fees around Europe. Deep down, they must also know that the appointment of Hassan Salihamidzic as sporting director was not an ideal solution.
All of these factors have naturally contributed to Bayern's regression. But the cumulative negative effect has still been much more extreme than the club thought possible because it was amplified by the consequences of a grave misjudgment.
Bayern mistakenly believed that Ancelotti's fabled man-management skills would partially offset the loss of structural cohesion on the pitch. But even in that respect, the Italian has failed to deliver. Bayern's dressing room has not been this fraught with tension in years. And with every bad result, the cracks are deepening.
"Are the players still behind the manager?" Arjen Robben was asked after the game. The Dutchman declined to answer.
For all of previous incumbent Pep Guardiola's faults, this would have been an unthinkable question during his reign. Neither the board nor the club ever lost the fundamental belief in the Catalan's working methods, because they experienced their undoubtedly beneficial impact every single day, irrespective of the one or two bad results per season.
With Ancelotti, the situation is different. As much as they might like him as a person, they can't banish the thought that he should be doing more to make Bayern a functioning team, on and off the pitch.
Bayern are struggling and something needs to change.
The 57-year-old's radical rotation policy against PSG was a high-risk gamble that failed to pay off, just like the idea of lining up with a narrow team, bereft of the wing play of Robben and Franck Ribery.
These things can happen against top opposition; not every plan comes off; not everyone will be happy, least of all big names on the bench. Of much greater concern is the fact that Ancelotti's plans visibly lack specific direction.
For all the dominance that Bayern did muster half-way through the first half, their attacking play in the final third had an air of desperation. More often than not, the ball was aimlessly lofted into the box, in lieu of more joined-up movement.
If it's individualism you want, you'd better have individual superstars up front who can win games without the help of a supporting cast. Bayern don't have these players at their disposal. Their success since 2009-10 has been based team ethic, tactical innovation and commitment. Right now, none of these things are present and there are few signs that they will magically appear in the coming months either.
Nobody will say it publicly yet, but the aims for the season have already shifted; from the traditional "we have to win it all" to damage limitation.
Somehow, they have to get this year over with and make sure that the next manager -- widely reported to be Julian Nagelsmann -- can move the team closer to Europe's elite again in 2018-19.
Raphael Honigstein is ESPN FC's German football expert. Follow: @honigstein
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Source: espn.co.uk