FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - Bundesliga - Bayern Munich v VfL Wolfsburg - Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany - May 12, 2024 Bayern Munich coach Thomas Tuchel during a press conference after the match REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth
BERLIN (Reuters) - Thomas Tuchel confirmed on Friday he will leave Bayern Munich at the end of the season after failing to reach an agreement with the club to stay on as coach after talks this week.
Tuchel took over last March and steered them to the Bundesliga title last season but Bayern will finish the current campaign without any silverware for the first time in more than a decade.
Bayern bosses had informed Tuchel in February he would not stay on for the last year of his contract and would leave at the end of the season.
But after several prospective successors, including Julian Nagelsmann, Ralf Rangnick and Xabi Alonso, decided to remain in their current jobs, Bayern turned to Tuchel to discuss the possibility of him staying on.
"This is the last press conference here. The February decision remains," Tuchel said. "There were talks again with the club in the past week but we did not reach an agreement on a continued cooperation so we stick with the February decision."
"We did not agree but I won't go into individual points. That all happens behind closed doors."
The Bavarians, who travel to Hoffenheim on the last matchday of the season on Saturday, are battling to hold on to second place in the table and are two points ahead of VfB Stuttgart.
They crashed out to third-tier Saarbruecken in the German Cup and were eliminated by Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals, ending the campaign without a trophy despite spending a league-record 100 million euros ($108.41 million) to sign striker Harry Kane.
"The decision for me to leave was taken in February so you can imagine that my head, after processing, was 1000% behind that decision," Tuchel said.
"There was the theoretical possibility of a 180 degree turn now and the initiative came from the club."
"The reasons why it did not happen, I don't know, are minimal. Maybe the reasons are not clear, also for the decision in February, but it is what it is," Tuchel said.
($1 = 0.9224 euros)
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Toby Davis)
