Max Eberl needed a single syllable. Asked whether Bayern Munich should hand Jonas Urbig the number one shirt after Manuel Neuer limped off against Mainz, the sporting director said no.

Neuer went down with a partial tendon tear in his right foot shortly before half-time on Saturday, as Bayern confirmed after the match. The club said he will be sidelined “for the time being”, with reports in Germany and the United States putting the absence at up to two months.

The 40-year-old had only just returned from the same complaint. He had missed two Bundesliga matches with a foot problem before Saturday’s trip to Mainz, which was his 550th Bundesliga appearance and made him, at 40, the oldest player ever to turn out in the Bundesliga for Bayern.

“It’s the same problem he had before. It’s resurfaced now. We hope it’s not too serious,” Eberl said after Bayern’s 2-1 win in comments carried by Bundesliga.com.

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Urbig, 23, came on and finished the match. Under assistant coach Aaron Danks, who is leading the team while head coach Vincent Kompany recovers from a late-October collapse diagnosed as meningeal irritation, Urbig is set to start in goal for the coming weeks.

Eberl will not touch the hierarchy

The question Eberl would not entertain was whether this is now the moment to make Urbig the permanent first choice. His answer, reported across German outlets, was simply no.

His position has not moved since October, when after an error from Neuer against Augsburg he told reporters that “Manu is our number one and will remain so,” and that the plan around Urbig had been in place “for almost a year and a half to two years.”

That plan has a timetable. Urbig, signed from 1. FC Köln and under contract through 2029, is widely expected to become the permanent number one from the summer of 2027, after Neuer’s deal runs out. For now he is a stand-in with a clear ceiling.

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Sepp Maier: ‘Give it up, Manu’

What Eberl will not say out loud, Bayern’s goalkeeping icon Sepp Maier is saying for him.

Two days after the injury, Maier, the 1974 World Cup winner, told SPORT1 that it was time for Neuer to stop.

“I’d tell him, ‘Give it up, Manu!’ You’ve given so much to soccer, you’ve won everything, and you don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore,” Maier said, in comments relayed by FCBinside.

Maier pointed at Urbig as the reason there is no need to push Neuer through another comeback.

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“Bayern has a good goalkeeper in Urbig. There’s no need to take any unnecessary risks with Manuel. A tendon injury is not something to be taken lightly,” he told SPORT1.

Out through the winter break

Bayern have not set a return date. If the two-month projection holds, Neuer would miss the rest of 2026 and the Bundesliga’s winter break, with his next competitive matches falling in late January. Urbig will keep goal until then.

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