Past, present and future: This is Miroslav Klose’s latest intelligent step to the top job

As exclusively reported by our colleagues at Eurosport Germany, former Bayern Munich and Germany striker Miroslav Klose is set to become assistant coach for Bayern manager Hansi Flick on July 1.

Klose, who will be 42 by the time his contract starts, currently works within the Bayern youth set-up and, according to the report, turned down an offer to become an assistant at another Bundesliga club.

This is just the latest step on what appears to be a journey that will eventually take Klose to being the head coach of Bayern Munich.

This new role will be his third since retiring, after managing the Bayern U17s, and before that, working within the national team set-up.

It is through his time with the German national team as both a player and coach that he has his relationship with Flick, a former assistant for Joachim Low. From the summer he will now be part of Flick’s intimate circle whilst coaching the first-team.

As a multiple Bundesliga champion, and World Cup winner, Klose brings a wealth of knowledge to Flick’s first-team and he will already be well-known to some of the more long-serving members of the squad such as Manuel Neuer or Thomas Muller.

Of course Klose’s primary expertise when he was playing was scoring goals, something he did with considerable aplomb. Our colleagues in Germany report that Klose will be primed with helping the club’s strikers, be that the experienced Robert Lewandowski or the raw but promising Joshua Zirkzee.

Former Bayern president Uli Hoeness really installed the values of family within the club, working hard to ensure that the Bavarian giants always strove to find places for their former players within the set-up.

Klose is just the latest name to join the club with former defender Martin Demichelis currently coaching with the youth team as well. In the front office there is Hasan Salihamidzic and legendary goalkeeper Manuel Neuer.

As for Klose, the coach he continues the work-rate of Klose the player, according to our colleagues often demanding a lot from both himself and his players.

He is reportedly someone who is very open to the ideas and suggestions from his assistants and wants the coaching room to be an environment when all ideas are welcome. He also looks after those close to him, he wants his assistant with the U17s, Slaven Skeledzic, to succeed him as manager.

However sometimes he can be considered too harsh on the younger players and knows that he still has work to do to be able to constantly communicate with the next generation. In fairness to Klose, he wouldn’t be the first former player to struggle with that upon becoming a coach.

The ultimate end goal is clear, that one day Klose will take over as the head coach of Bayern. There is currently no time-frame on that decision but it’s certainly a plan within the hierarchy. It’s likely that much of it will depend on how Flick continues having taken over Bayern when Niko Kovac was relieved of his duties.

It’s a clear shift of intentions from Bayern, when you look through the recent history of their managers they are often big names who had no prior connection to the club.

By hiring Flick and then promoting Klose to learn under him they are looking to continue that family tradition even further.

Within English football it’s very hard to think of any obvious recent examples, whilst there are managers with close connections to the clubs they currently manage, see Frank Lampard, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Mikel Arteta, they often do the bulk of their apprenticing elsewhere.

There are signs that may be changing, with Arsenal hiring Per Mertesacker as the academy director as an example whilst Solskjaer did spend some time with the United youth set-up. Lampard’s assistant Morris might be the best example in the game at the moment, having worked his way up the youth team as a former player before following Lampard initially to Derby County and then back to Stamford Bridge.

However it still doesn’t feel ingrained in the way it does at Bayern, or even fellow European giant Real Madrid. Perhaps one day it will be more common place.