Christoph Freund explains hiring of Bayern Munich’s brand new coach Daniel Fradley

Bram Geers worked with Vincent Kompany for a while. Geers worked as a fitness coach with Kompany at RSC Anderlecht when the latter adopted first his player-manager role before becoming the full time manager, then followed Kompany to Burnley and finally to Bayern Munich. But his journey together with the former Hamburger SV player ended in September 2025, when the 32-year-old was offered the job of Head of Performance at RSC Anderlecht. It was too good of an opportunity for the Belgian to pass up, but his departure ripped open a hole in Kompany’s coaching team at Bayern.

That hole has been filled by the January appointment Daniel Fradley, who joins Die Rekordmeister after around 2 years’ work as Chief Analyst at Manchester City. Bayern sporting director Christoph Freund directly addressed Bayern’s new assistant coach recently ahead of Bayern’s friendly against RB Salzburg:

“After Bram Geers left in mid-September, Vincent Kompany and I discussed how we could compensate for his absence within the coaching staff,” Freund revealed, as captured by @iMiaSanMia. “It was important for us to find someone who could work with the team on the pitch and also individually with the players. We wanted to add another coach [like Fradley] to the staff who has both an analytical background and extensive experience working directly on the pitch. Someone who can work individually with players in various areas and bring quality to our daily training sessions. That was the deciding factor.”

It is interesting that Freund and Kompany chose to replace a fitness coach like Geers with an analyst like Fradley. Why was the analytical background necessary? Perhaps Bayern are looking to spread Geers’ responsibility on multiple shoulders and found an additional need for a coach with Fradley’s expertise.

Furthermore, it is interesting that Freund clarified that only he and Kompany discussed the hiring of a new coach. Both Freund and Bayern’s board member for sport, Max Eberl, are in charge of the club’s sporting matters. But what duties are specifically Eberl’s and which ones are Freund’s is rather unclear to the general public. Perhaps one of Freund’s duties is to be in charge of managing the coaching team?