At the delicate question of a "mole", Julian Nagelsmann let himself be carried away into a joke, but actually he was not in the mood for fun in the delicate matter. "I'm annoyed and think a lot about it, because I'm thinking about what the person who passes it on, what does he hope for," said the coach of FC Bayern Munich before the Bundesliga duel on Sunday (17.30 clock in the F.A.Z. live ticker for the Bundesliga and DAZN) at Bayer Leverkusen.

He could not imagine that immense sums would flow for this. "I don't know the motives of the person, but the person will think about it."

The reason for Nagelsmann's upset were published tactical statements in the "Sport Bild". "If the person wants to harm me, so be it. But it also harms every single player. That's not in the spirit of the matter," said the 35-year-old. One will not find out who the "mole" was. "Moles, I believe, are protected. If you drive across the Bavarian countryside, you will see 80,000 molehills on each field and you must not remove them because the mole is under species protection. The search is therefore very complicated," Nagelsmann joked.

Nagelsmann: "It doesn't belong"

Nagelsmann does not fear that the information, which should come from the run-up to the game against VfL Bochum (3:0), would now have deciphered FC Bayern. It was not the big multiplication table, he said. But it makes it easier for the opponent.

"It's important to me that I can look in the mirror in the evening, that I treat my players and my coaching colleagues well," said Nagelsmann. "The person will hopefully not be able to look in the mirror so well, because it just doesn't belong."

The people of Munich do not want to be distracted from such things before major tasks. After the duel with Leverkusen, in which FC Bayern has to do without injured attacker Eric Maxim Coupo-Moting, and after the international break, the top game against Borussia Dortmund is scheduled for 1 April.

After that, it continues in quick succession with groundbreaking games. First, the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup against SC Freiburg will take place on 4 April, followed a week later by the quarter-final first leg against Manchester City in the Champions League.