When the Munich nightlife crowd pushed through the doors of Edmoses in the mid-2000s, few of them knew they were walking into the blueprint for FC Bayern’s future. The bar was stylish, young, buzzing. It was also, crucially, run by Arnold / Werner – the architectural firm that would soon be handed the keys to Säbener Straße.
In early 2008, those architects walked into a very different setting: a pitch meeting at the Hotel Palace in Bogenhausen. Across the table sat Jürgen Klinsmann, the incoming coach with American ideas, and the club’s power axis, Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, still intoxicated by the 2006 World Cup “summer fairy tale.”
“We had to present our concept for a campus with a restaurant, wellness area, changing rooms, an auditorium and so on,” recalls architect Sascha Arnold. Their edge? Not just drawings and models. “We were running a few bars at the time that Bayern players also frequented, such as Edmoses. The bosses thought we had a connection with the younger generation and understood their needs.”
They won the contract. And Bayern’s training ground was never the same again.
Klinsmann’s American Dream
The plan sounded radical for German football. A campus, not just a training base. Players on site eight hours a day. Monitored nutrition. Controlled environment. Team bonding by architecture.
Christian Lell, then 23 and very much the target demographic, was blown away. He called it a “really cool location” and half-joked that he wanted a granny flat built into it: “If you build me one, I’ll be here all the time.” He didn’t get the flat, but he and his teammates were effectively tethered to Säbener Straße anyway.
The refurbishment turned the once functional complex into something closer to a US franchise HQ. An auditorium with booths for simultaneous interpreters. A library. Language courses. Common rooms with table tennis and pool tables. A PlayStation. A DJ booth.
“This is unique in the world; neither Real Madrid nor FC Barcelona have anything like it,” Klinsmann enthused. Mark van Bommel, who knew Barça from the inside, backed him up: “You don’t see anything like this anywhere in Europe. Perhaps in hotels in Dubai, but not at a football club.”
Then came the Buddhas. Klinsmann’s personal interior designer, Jürgen Meißner, added them as a spiritual touch. They quickly turned into visual shorthand for his downfall. Ten months, no titles, and he was gone. The statues stayed as mute witnesses to a failed sporting project that, in infrastructural terms, had dragged Germany’s biggest club into a new age.
Landauer’s Leap: Giving Bayern a Home
The road to this glossy modernity began in far more modest surroundings.
FC Bayern 1900 was born in Café Gisela near Odeonsplatz. Early training sessions took place on Schyrenstraße by the River Isar. Grounds and offices moved around the city like a club still searching for its identity.
The decisive step came in 1949. President Kurt Landauer secured the rights to use the Harlaching district sports ground on Säbener Straße from the City of Munich. At last, Bayern had a real home. The complex, just south of the city centre and not far from Grünwalder Stadium and TSV 1860’s territory, is now watched over by a statue of the visionary president.
“At first there were three training pitches,” says Sepp Maier, who joined as a 14-year-old in 1958. Next to them stood the groundsman’s house: kitchenette downstairs, living quarters upstairs. Attached to it, simple wooden huts for changing and showering. Left side for the pros, right for amateurs and youth. Behind that, the workshop of bootmaker Sepp Renn.
There was hot water in the showers, Maier insists. But only briefly. “You always had to make sure you were one of the first to shower, because afterwards it was cold until the boiler had reheated the water.” The club office was still in the city centre. “We had to go there once a month to collect our wages. Bank transfers didn’t exist yet.”
From these conditions emerged a team that would dominate a continent: Maier, Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller. Promotion in 1965, first Bundesliga title in 1969. Germany soon felt too small.
The First Big Leap: A Clubhouse for Champions
If Bayern wanted to stand toe-to-toe with Europe’s giants, their infrastructure had to grow with their ambitions. Conveniently, they had a building contractor as president: Wilhelm Neudecker.
In 1970, the club appealed in its newsletter for donations to fund a new clubhouse on Säbener Straße. The idea was bold: unite teams and administration under one roof. Members responded with 500,000 marks. The final bill came to 3.8 million.
On 17 May 1971, in front of 150 guests including Munich’s Lord Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel, the new complex opened. It offered spacious changing rooms, offices, a restaurant, a multi-purpose sports hall, four grass pitches and a hard court. The old barracks stayed on for a while, now downgraded to garden sheds.
The thinking already echoed Klinsmann’s future concept: keep the players on site longer. Rooms with beds were built so the team could stay overnight on Fridays and prepare together for Saturday’s matches.
It sounded professional. It felt, to the players, like a school trip gone wrong.
“We only did that maybe three times,” Maier recalls. “Then we complained because there was no comfort at all. It looked like a youth hostel. We couldn’t stand it.”
Manager Robert Schwan, a pioneer in his own way, understood. Neudecker relented. Hotel stays were approved. Before big matches, the squad even decamped to the luxurious Bachmair on Lake Tegernsee.
The payoff came quickly. Better training conditions, rising professionalism, and a squad of extraordinary quality produced three consecutive European Cups in 1974, 1975 and 1976.
Hierarchies in the Basement
As the trophies piled up, Säbener Straße evolved in quieter ways. The unused dormitories were converted into extra changing rooms for youth and amateur teams. The professionals moved to the basement.
“There were four changing rooms down there,” recalls Klaus Augenthaler. “The first for the coaches, the second for the stars – Beckenbauer, Maier and Müller – the third for the rest of the first-team players, and the last one for everyone else. The team’s hierarchy was clearly reflected in the dressing room allocation.”
When Augenthaler arrived in 1975 as a 17-year-old, he started at the very bottom of that ladder. Even the massage table followed the pecking order. “Our masseur, Josip Saric, actually only treated the big-name players who gave him tips.”
Only on the pitch did status melt away. The grass, though, told its own story. “When we came back from the summer holidays, the pitches were always beautifully prepared,” Augenthaler says. “But by autumn they were no longer fit for a Bundesliga club.”
The public could judge for themselves. Training sessions were open. During school holidays, the place buzzed. The “Insider” restaurant, with its raised terrace beside the pitches, became a natural grandstand and meeting point.
After training, players and fans often ended up at the same tables. “When we played badly, the onlookers would have a go at us,” Maier remembers. “‘You played a right load of rubbish on Saturday,’ they’d say, ‘but never mind, we’re not angry with you anymore, let’s have a pint, come on then.’”
Hoeneß, Merchandising and the Glass Dome
In 1983, a young manager named Uli Hoeneß returned from a trip to the USA with another idea. Inspired by American sports marketing, he opened the Bayern Boutique on Säbener Straße, selling fan merchandise directly from the club’s home.
The experiment worked. By 1989, the shop was expanded, and the site underwent its second major refurbishment. The now-iconic glass dome was built, along with a separate building dedicated solely to the professional squad.
Säbener Straße was no longer just a training ground. It was becoming the physical expression of Bayern’s growing commercial power.
The players, this time, were in no hurry to escape. If Maier’s generation had fled the “youth hostel” vibe, the next wave treated the place almost like a second living room.
In 2003, 18-year-old Bastian Schweinsteiger turned up at 2 a.m., enjoying the hot tub with a young lady. When security, alerted by the alarm system, arrived on the scene, he introduced her as his cousin.
Not every late-night story was so light-hearted. In 2000, a fire broke out in the basement sauna. Mehmet Scholl and Giovane Elber had to escape through first-floor windows using ropes. The damage totalled around two million marks and triggered minor refurbishments that paved the way for Klinsmann’s sweeping overhaul eight years later.
Seven Weeks, 2,000 Square Metres, 15 Million Euros
For Arnold / Werner, the Klinsmann project was a sprint and a marathon rolled into one.
“All in all, that was definitely the most ambitious project we’ve ever undertaken,” says Arnold. “Before that, the clubhouse grounds were a 1970s building in a 1980s style, which in parts looked like a Bavarian card-playing corner.”
In seven weeks, more than 2,000 square metres were stripped back to the shell and rebuilt from scratch. The estimated cost: 15 million euros. Construction ran around the clock in three eight-hour shifts. “That was an incredible achievement, especially by the site management and the tradespeople,” Arnold notes.
The players stepped into a new world. High-tech, comfortable, tailored to elite athletes. Not everyone benefitted.
The loyal training regulars suddenly found their routines broken. Landlady Erika Niemeyer had to close her pub. “I am appalled and extremely sad,” she said at the time. “They are tearing my heart out. Everyone here, including the fans, is losing a piece of home.”
Years later, the “Paulaner Treff” emerged as a successor. But it opened only during public training sessions and felt more exclusive than Edmoses ever did. Where fans once came and went freely, they now had to settle for a handful of open days each year.
Curtains, Campuses and Closed Doors
The shift in tone was unmistakable. High curtains went up along the fences to shield “secret” sessions. In 2024, reports emerged that fans standing behind those curtains, simply trying to listen, were being moved on. The days of kids leaning on railings, watching their heroes up close, were slipping away.
Even Bayern’s own youth players lost access. Since 2017, they have been barred from watching first-team training. Space was one reason. Strategy was another.
The entire academy, including the boarding school, moved to a new €70 million campus in the north of Munich, near the Allianz Arena. Säbener Straße, once the cradle of the club’s talent, became the polished preserve of the professionals and the board.
The site kept growing. In the 2010s, a modern multi-purpose hall, an additional office building and new outdoor areas with a sandpit and a football tennis court appeared. Arnold / Werner added a swimming pool with a counter-current system for aqua jogging and created a new medical area on the top floor.
In 2013, they were back in the coach’s office. The new man: Pep Guardiola.
“For the desk, I gave him a choice between a standard model by Norman Foster and a unique, asymmetrical, sculptural piece I had designed myself,” Arnold recalls. Guardiola chose the one-off. “Pep thought my desk was cool and absolutely wanted it. So we had it made by a joiner.”
Arnold suggested “a grey Eames aluminium chair with a soft pad” to go with it. Delivery took time, so Guardiola initially received the same model in black. “When the grey chair finally arrived, I took the black one,” Arnold says. “I still use it today. Pep’s chair is still comfortable to sit on.”
The Next Reinvention
Even the best-designed spaces age. Hotels tend to renovate every decade or so. Bayern have stretched their current cycle far longer.
“Hotels generally need to renovate every ten to twelve years,” Arnold points out. “So it’s no surprise that Bayern are now planning a refurbishment after 18 years.”
The idea had already surfaced under former CEO Oliver Kahn. His successor, Jan-Christian Dreesen, made it official in a 2024 press release: “A new training centre is a key component in ensuring that FC Bayern can continue to attract international players and remain competitive at the very highest level.”
Local paper Münchner Merkur reported in December that preliminary planning permission had been obtained. This week, new reports suggested that construction of a fresh training ground could begin shortly. The figures are hefty even by Bayern standards: around 100 million euros, a three-year project, possible start as early as 2026.
From Landauer’s post-war gamble to Neudecker’s clubhouse, from the glass dome of the Hoeneß era to Klinsmann’s Buddhas and Guardiola’s sculptural desk, Säbener Straße has mirrored every twist in Bayern’s identity.
First barracks. Then youth hostel. Then a training base that felt like a hotel in Dubai.
What comes next for the place where Germany’s most powerful club has always gone to work?
