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Details of the latest public embarrassment to rock FC Hollywood emerged on Monday. Bild learned that Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness has revoked Paul Breitner’s access to the VIP section — the “honrary stands” (Ehrentribüne) — on account of Breitner’s frank and very harsh criticism of the front office’s now infamous press conference, at which chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic, and Hoeness himself lashed out at the media over negative coverage of Bayern and Germany players.
Paul Breitner minced no words in his assessment of the press conference on the program Blickpunkt Sport (video). He stated (cf. AZ),
I am still depressed because in the 48 years that I’ve spent with or on the margins of FC Bayern, I could never have imagined that this club would show such vulnerability, that it would show such weakness.
Breitner argued that the press conference had “ruined the work that the club had done in the past few years to escape its arrogance image.” Breitner lambasted Hoeness’s part in the press conference in particular:
With Uli it’s always about the Bayern family. And now the children in the family have to say: “Now we have to be terribly ashamed of Dad.” Karl-Heinz comes in prepared, cites the constitution, and ten minutes later the guy next to him tramples it under foot.
Executive vice chairman and financial director Jan-Christian Dreesen called to give Breitner the news. Breitner told Bild,
There was a call from Mr. Dreesen; I was being advised by Uli Hoeneß not to show my face in the VIP section for the foreseeable future. I told him I expected as much. And I wouldn’t like to see this or that person at the moment anyway.
After the call, Breitner also decided to return his lifelong honorary tickets. “I wouldn’t like to give the impression that I want free tickets,” he said. Breitner added he would “buy his tickets like normal when I want to go into the stadium.”
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Breitner is widely regarded as one of the best German players of all time. He played two stints for Bayern Munich, 1970-1974 and 1978-1983, after which he retired. With Bayern he won the Bundesliga seven times and the European Championship, the predecessor of the Champions League, in 1972 at the age of 21. He won the World Cup for West Germany in 1974, scoring a penalty kick in the final. Breitner had been a club ambassador as recently as 2017.