Thomas Muller s wife ridiculed under-fire Bayern Munich coach Niko Kovac for benching the Germany international and only introducing him with 20 minutes left of the 1-1 draw against Freiburg.
Bayern are four points behind Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund after Saturday s disappointing result, having conceded an 89th-minute equaliser.
Serge Gnabry found the bottom-right corner 10 minutes from time and had seemingly wrapped things up for Bayern, only for Lucas Holer to level at the end.
Muller s wife Lisa mocked Kovac on her Instagram account when the decision was made to bring the forward off the bench.
More than 70 minutes until he finally has a brain wave, she wrote.
Muller himself downplayed his wife s comments, however, putting it down to frustration.
Smh 1-1
— FC Bayern English (@FCBayernEN)
It was out of emotion, he told Sky Deutschland. In hindsight I don t think it was super, but she just loves me, what should I do?
Kovac was unconcerned by the matter, pointing out it was not as if Muller himself wrote the message.
There s nothing to clarify, the Croatian told reporters in his post-match news conference. Obviously it wasn t Thomas himself who wrote that.
Kovac was also asked about internal matters seemingly being leaked to the German media, though he is not convinced every such situation is deliberate.
I was a professional for 18 years, he continued. When I started in 1991 and finished in 2009 it was always the same. This is not a unique feature of one club.
I think that there were, are and will be a lot of clubs in the Bundesliga where there is a player who has a good connection to one or more journalists.
Maybe it went through a second or third person. You can talk with someone you know and this person knows another person and so on. So internal matters are staying internal. I m following this and I can t tell more about that.
