Marc Kosicke: The Architect Behind Bayern Munich's Identity

Jürgen Klopp did not arrive at the DFB alone. He brought the man who has quietly shaped some of German football’s most powerful narratives for nearly two decades.

Marc Kosicke, long known as Klopp’s right-hand man, has been officially installed as “assistant coach for strategy, development and innovation” with the national team. To clear the way, he stepped down as managing director of his company Projekt Five and ended his advisory roles with other coaches. One client remains: Klopp.

“It is not enough for only a head coach to come in,” Klopp said at his unveiling. “We have to change a great many things. We want to turn over every stone.” If that is the mission, Kosicke is the man with the spade.

From Werder fan to Bayern’s identity architect

Kosicke’s influence in German football stretches far beyond the touchline. A Bremen-born, self-confessed Werder fan, he helped shape the very identity of Bayern Munich, the club he grew up opposing.

He is widely regarded as the “inventor” of the modern coach adviser in Germany and worked with Julian Nagelsmann until 2021. Long before that, he left a lasting mark in Munich by turning “Mia san mia” from a terrace phrase and regional self-image into Bayern’s official slogan.

The story of how that happened sounds almost too neat for fiction. In 2008, on a flight to a FIFA event in Switzerland, Kosicke found himself on the same plane as Uli Hoeneß. Hoeneß, then Bayern’s general manager, was frustrated. He complained about his own players and about a deeper problem: nobody, he said, really knew what Bayern actually stood for.

Kosicke pressed him. What did Bayern stand for, exactly? Hoeneß had no clear answer.

That was the opening.

Kosicke told him about his years with Nike and Adidas, where “company bibles” defined values and messages for every employee. Hoeneß listened, then asked him directly if he could create something similar for Bayern.

“With 100 per cent cluelessness but a lot of self-confidence, I agreed,” Kosicke later recalled. Hoeneß made one thing clear: he wanted Kosicke himself, not a polished consulting firm “tie-wearing troupe”.

Four weeks that defined a club

What followed was an unusually broad internal workshop for a superclub. Kosicke assembled a deliberately mixed working group: staff from the fan shop and marketing, the kit man, the youth coordinator, media chief Stefan Mennerich, and chief scout Wolfgang Dremmler. For four weeks they worked on Bayern’s values.

The slogan, though, was already sitting in Kosicke’s head. “Mia san mia” was fixed from the start, he said. He had it in mind on that very plane with Hoeneß, but kept it to himself, not wanting to “shoot his bolt” too early. The group’s job was to build the value structure around it.

They eventually agreed on 16 “commandments” for Bayern. Among them: “We are a family and stand by one another.” And: “We do not communicate about one another in public.” Simple lines, but clear signposts for behaviour inside a club that often dominates headlines.

For the board presentation, Kosicke went for symbolism. He had prototype copies of the new “bible” bound in real lederhosen leather. When he revealed the title, the room reacted instantly. Hoeneß liked the slogan, but there was one problem. On the cover it read “Mir san mir”, not “Mia san mia”.

As a man from Bremen, Kosicke was not entirely fluent in Bavarian dialect. The meaning was right, the spelling was not. That was quickly corrected.

Rights signed away, legacy secured

Kosicke’s work did not stop at the glossy booklet. He also developed a roadmap for how Bayern should embed these values across the club. Once that was done, his job was finished.

When he sent his invoice, he also handed over his rights to the slogan. He assured Bayern that, as a Bremen native and adviser to Jürgen Klopp, he would not parade himself as the grand inventor of “Mia san mia”.

The idea was clear: every new arrival at Bayern, whether an office employee, a youth player from Fürstenfeldbruck or a star signing like Sadio Mané, would receive this bible as part of their onboarding. The message was printed in leather and ink: this is who we are, these are the values we live by.

That same mind, once tasked with articulating Bayern’s identity, is now embedded at the heart of the DFB project under Klopp. The man who helped give “Mia san mia” its official voice will now try to define something even trickier: what the German national team is supposed to stand for in a new era.