Marc Kosicke: The Architect Behind Bayern Munich's Identity
Jürgen Klopp did not walk into the DFB alone. He brought the man who has quietly shaped some of German football’s most powerful identities.
Marc Kosicke, long known as Klopp’s right-hand man and one of the most influential – and discreet – figures behind the modern coaching era, has been officially installed as “assistant coach for strategy, development and innovation” with the German national team. To clear the way, he has stepped down as managing director of his company Projekt Five and ended his advisory work for other coaches.
Klopp made the scale of the project clear at his unveiling.
“It is not enough for only a head coach to come in,” he said. “We have to change a great many things. We want to turn over every stone.”
If anyone in German football embodies that kind of structural thinking, it is Kosicke. For around two decades he has been at Klopp’s side, shaping careers, environments and narratives. He is widely regarded as the “inventor” of the modern coach adviser, a role that has grown from niche to essential as head coaches became CEOs in tracksuits. Until 2021, he also worked closely with Julian Nagelsmann, another symbol of the sport’s new generation of tacticians.
Yet Kosicke’s influence stretches beyond dugouts and training pitches. A Bremen-born, self-confessed Werder fan, he played a decisive role in sharpening the identity of Bayern Munich, the club that defines success – and divides opinion – in German football.
The story begins in 2008, on a flight to a FIFA event in Switzerland. Kosicke was travelling with his then business partner Oliver Bierhoff when he ran into Uli Hoeneß. The Bayern figurehead, never one to hide his feelings, was venting his frustration. He complained about his own players and lamented that nobody really knew what Bayern Munich stood for anymore.
Kosicke did what good advisers do: he asked a simple, disarming question. What, exactly, did Hoeneß think Bayern stood for?
Hoeneß had no clear answer.
Kosicke then drew on his years with Nike and Adidas. Those companies, he explained, worked with “company bibles” – internal handbooks that set out values and messages for every employee. Hoeneß was intrigued and asked if Kosicke could create something similar for Bayern.
“With 100 per cent cluelessness but a lot of self-confidence, I agreed,” Kosicke later recalled with a laugh. Hoeneß made one thing clear: he wanted Kosicke himself, not a polished consulting firm “tie-wearing troupe” from Roland Berger.
So Kosicke built a working group that looked nothing like a classic corporate task force. People from the fan shop. Marketing staff. The kit man. The youth coordinator. Media chief Stefan Mennerich. Chief scout Wolfgang Dremmler. For four weeks, this eclectic mix sat together and worked through what Bayern Munich should stand for.
The slogan, though, was already in his head.
“Mia san mia” – the Bavarian dialect phrase that had long floated around the club as a kind of unwritten creed – was, for Kosicke, the obvious anchor from the very beginning. He had it in mind during that first conversation on the plane with Hoeneß. He kept it to himself, wary of firing his best shot too early. Instead, the group focused on building the values that would sit beneath it.
They ended up with 16 “commandments”. Simple, direct lines that would define behaviour and expectations. “We are a family and stand by one another.” “We do not communicate about one another in public.” Sentences that sound obvious until they are broken, and a club suddenly feels divided.
When the time came to present the results to the Bayern board, Kosicke added a flourish. He had prototype copies of the club bible bound in real lederhosen leather – a tactile nod to Bavarian tradition. As he unveiled the title, the room reacted instantly. The slogan landed.
Hoeneß loved it. Almost.
“Great slogan, but this MIR is a space station,” he joked. On the cover, the wording read “Mir san mir” instead of “Mia san mia”. The Bremen native had tripped over Bavarian dialect. It was the only correction required.
Alongside the bible, Kosicke delivered a roadmap for how Bayern should embed these values across the club. From that point, his job in Munich was done. When he sent his invoice, he also signed away his rights to the slogan and gave a promise that summed up his low-profile approach.
“As someone from Bremen and adviser to Jürgen Klopp, I will not present myself as the great inventor of Mia san mia,” he assured them.
The plan was clear: every new arrival at Bayern, whether an office employee, a youth player from Fürstenfeldbruck or a star signing such as Sadio Mané, would receive the bible as part of their onboarding. The message would be unmistakable. This is who we are. These are the values we live by.
Now Kosicke’s canvas is the DFB and the national team, a stage where identity has felt blurred in recent years. Klopp wants to turn over every stone. He has brought in the man who once took a vague feeling at Bayern Munich and turned it into “Mia san mia”.
The question for Germany is simple: what will their bible say?
