FC Bayern Forum

Of course Neuer isn't the one who would cause a problem; even if he had a problem with it, he wouldn't be so dumb and state it publicly. It's Sammer who's gonna have a problem with how the whole thing went, and maybe some other teammates.

German media are using this against FC Bayern, claiming Sammer has violated principles of freedom of speech and democracy. Only Germans can come up with such an absurd thing. Sammer is a member of the board. Imagine the automotive industry held a vote who is the best manager in the industry, and an R&D manager at Mercedes voted an R&D manager at BMW as the best over any other manager at Mercedes. Of course the Daimler board would have a talk with him.

I only hope that Lewa soon improves his dealings with the media.


Nice article that's got nothing to do with the Lewandowski affair:

Today another scandal starts to hit world football organization – FIFA. Cristiano Ronaldo win his third FIFA Ballon d’Or on Monday but now after FIFA release documents that shown how players, coaches and media personal voted some people made a public statement saying that they didn’t vote like what is in FIFA document...

Just brilliant. Every time you think FIFA can't get any worse, you're proven wrong.

This stains the 1st as the last in this contest... boycott was the only right thing to do.

RedQueen wrote:German media are using this against FC Bayern, claiming Sammer has violated principles of freedom of speech and democracy. Only Germans can come up with such an absurd thing.

It's a very valid claim, one that I made myself too, and I'm not German. Perhaps they're exaggerating bring democracy into it but I see what they're getting at: if someone would like to cast a specific vote but is not allowed to by his or her management, then yes there's something intrinsically wrong. I totally understand the fact that it makes the management look bad, but in an international vote one cannot expect certain votes. Getting them is highly desirable, I agree, but nobody should get into trouble about it.

There's nothing valid at this claim for a top manager. FC Bayern is a world leading company, and there is a tremendous amount of money at stake. Having a Ballon D'Or winner is obviously a huge marketing statement. You don't gift it to a rival company like RM just like that. To expect a top notch business man to overlook this in favour of romantic considerations some fans have is just plain naive. I'm very confident that the line of reasoning and the comparison to the automotive industry I've put forward is much closer to Sammer's thinking than deliberations how an employee should have the right of free speech in a vote relevant for business success, let alone how a "brave" vote might improve the world.

I've said it before that there are very different reasons why one might think Lewa got it wrong, and this is one of them (I could name half a dozen others, having to do with loyalty to the people you work with, to your employer, to your colleagues who may even be your friends). Imagine there's a vote who is the best journalist - do you seriously expect our vaunted German journalists with their moral high ground to vote for a journalist working for another outlet, if one of their colleagues had a real chance of being voted the best? There's a good chance that they'd be sacked on the spot. They can't even push through an article that doesn't follow the opinion of their editor in chief. They're disgusting hypocrites with their condemnation of Sammer, nothing else.

Sammer is doing his job, and he's doing it very well. Please don't forget that he is one of those whose business and other skills are responsible for FC Bayern standing economically where they stand, and for FC Bayern even being able to pay players like Lewandowski.

The voting thing is mentioned also in the FCBtv news:

If Bayern lost 'democracy', there's no place else you'll find it...
Are we the club that puts player's wishes before everything else? Well, not in one case with Ribery and that again against RM for some reason.
Club legends in Bayern unlike in some other places on earth aren't forced to flee the country just because they need his jersey number for someone else.
Is it Bayern becoming an undemocratic place or they have no other choice to succeed in this system...
It's just one vote, it may count more for something else than for what it was used... So who is the bad guy now? You don't want to believe it until you see it, that's a good thing...
Sammer is not buying it, I'm not buying it... Lewa wtf.

RedQueen wrote:do you seriously expect our vaunted German journalists with their moral high ground to vote for a journalist working for another outlet, if one of their colleagues had a real chance of being voted the best? There's a good chance that they'd be sacked on the spot.

wow, talk about your hostile work environment!

quaazi wrote:wow, talk about your hostile work environment!

I'm not a journalist, fortunately, but I know how it works in almost all the outlets. Hearing these arias about free speech and democracy in the workplace from them of all people is beyond laughable.

An employee's right to free speech reaches its limits when his actions (or speeches) hurt his employers business prospects, at least as long as his employer doesn't do anything illegal or highly immoral. That's common knowledge. If the employee still decides to carry on, then it's the most normal thing in the business world that his employer has a talk with him.

I don't know whether you already did... (We've been posting since Oct 26th )
but I just checked pg 1 in this thread...
Paysur hit the nail on its head...

Another 'misunderstood'...

"The truth is they attributed the vote to Cristiano, and he is a player I like a lot, the same as Messi. They are special players, they put on a show, but I believe a German player deserved it. I do not know if Neuer did. Neuer had a great World Cup, but for me Philipp Lahm was important."

or what?
You don't want to get Simeone mad...

That's why this method of voting is flawed. Everybody has a conflict of interest. The voter can't vote freely because he has to consider what others might think about his vote. That just destroys the very essence of being voted by your peers which this award was going for.

This was why the previous process was much more acceptable. They don't have to consider what team or organization they are affiliated or anything reason outside of what the player shown on the field.

Now this has become a political voting. When Ribery was a victim of political voting we cried foul when Neuer didn't win because we can't rely on our own to vote with bias, we cry foul.

DFB before issuing license to coaches should mandate them to vote for a German. The German-American coach of my NT sure didn't get the memo. He voted for Ronaldo and Messi ahead of Neuer. What a pr*ck. At least my media voted for Ronaldo, Neuer, Müller.

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The politics game doesn't favor Germany, that's for sure. Others have brothers and sisters around the world as much as you want... Germany will not play the politics card without being pushed cause they're that smart to know that they'll lose that battle.

They hugged and kissed in the show(Messi/Ronaldo), told each other 'you're the best'... 'you deserved it'. But they didn't vote for each other... It's good that this world has a Lewa to do the justice.

He voted Ronaldo, while i'm not happy with that but that was his choice. We have to move on. I believe it's a genuine vote. Especially after he said that he would change his vote for Neuer. His one vote won't change much. Yes, 2nd place but so what. It won't change the fact that Messi still has 15% of vote, about the same as Neuer has. This indicates that the Ronaldo/Messi brand still strong like the previous years. By looking at the percentage, there's no way a 3rd person is going to break this duopoly. Neuer's votes isn't even close to Ronaldo but instead close to Messi. He won't make it because this is a popularity contest. Even Neuer himself said he didn't stand a chance because he's not an international brand. And the fact that a defender wouldn't outshine an attacker because of the bias-ness for attackers. People only remember goals, not saves. And this trend will continue for the rest of the life.

FCBayernMunchen wrote:The fairest way to do it was to ask coaches and captains to vote every 1 or 2 months, then add the votes together at the end of the year. But even that has its problems. There will be months in which some players don't play (like Neuer right now), and it will only serve to make the biased voters' say even stronger.

It's only useful when everyone is neutral. The best way is to change the voting system. As long as there's an personal interest involve, there will be people that play politics. There are people that will cast votes based on their interest.

Regarding the top 11 players, i guess the voters are thinking they're playing Fifa 14 while casting their vote.

Meanwhile the players might be laughing at this fiasco while having their coffee break.