Felix Magath led Bayern Munich to consecutive German league titles in his first two seasons as the club's manager. (OLIVER LANG/AFP/Getty Images).

The fickle finger of fate tapped another bewildered soul on the shoulder this past week when Bayern Munich fired manager Felix Magath.

Magath's tenure as manager came to an end Wednesday when Bayern dismissed him after a successful 2 ½ year spell in charge of Germany's most famous soccer club.

In soccer, you're only as good as your last game, and as such, the sword of Damocles is always dangled over a manager's head. Managers are hired to be fired, especially in this day and age when winning league titles and Champions League crowns puts millions of dollars in a team's pocket. Failure is not tolerated.

Soccer is renowned for its managerial musical chair act, its coaching merry-go-round, but in this case, Magath's firing makes little sense.

It was earlier in his managerial career when Magath earned a reputation as a taskmaster and disciplinarian. He became famous for conducting marathon training sessions where he ran his players into the ground with gruelling drills designed to improve their fitness and conditioning.

Magath's zealous commitment to hard work led to his players bestowing him with such flattering nicknames as "Saddam" and "Quälix" - The Torturer, a combination of his first name Felix and the German word "quälen" (to torture).

Magath replaced Ottmar Hitzfeld at Bayern in July 2004 and won the German league title and German Cup in each of his first two seasons in charge. No other team has ever won the double in back-to-back seasons in the history of the German Bundesliga.

This season, however, has been anything but smooth, as the two-time defending German league champions have looked far from a cohesive unit on the field.

Bayern lost to Borussia Dortmund last Friday and was held to a draw by lowly Bochum at home Tuesday. Those two results saw Bayern, who were also eliminated from the German Cup following a loss to modest Alemannia Aachen in December, drop eight points behind Bundesliga co-leaders Werder Bremen and Schalke 04.

The draw against Bochum hastened Magath's exit, according to the club, because Bayern dropped to fourth place in the league standings - only the top three finishers in the Bundesliga at the end of the campaign qualify for next season's Champions League.

"We regret this step. Felix Magath did a very good job in the last 2½ years in Bayern, with great success, especially the two doubles," club chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said in a statement.

"But we, as those responsible for the club, had to react to the current developments. Concern about qualifying for next season's Champions League led us to reach today's [Wednesday's] decision."

It's hard to see the logic in that decision, though, especially when you consider there are 15 games left in the season - plenty of time for Bayern to close the gap - and that Bayern's crucial game against Real Madrid in the second round of the Champions League is less than three weeks away.

Even more curious was Bayern's choice to replace Magath. Hitzfeld was called upon to take over the club, but only on an interim basis. At the end of the season, Bayern plans to look for a fulltime replacement.

Hitzfeld has been out of the game since being let go by Bayern three years ago, which begs the question why Bayern saw fit to hand the reins to a coach who will only be minding the store, instead of letting Magath finish the season?

If Rummenigge wants someone to blame for Bayern's troubled season, then perhaps he should look in the mirror. Rummenigge and the rest of Bayern's upper management have a reputation for being cheapskates - they are notorious for their tight-fisted and penny-pinching approach in contract negotiations with players and in their transfer market dealings.

Bayern's malaise this season has much more to do with their intransigent transfer policy than any shortcomings displayed by Magath on the sidelines. Bayern never replaced influential playmaker Michael Ballack when he left the club for Chelsea last summer, and didn't see the need to go out and buy a player to fill the hole left by midfielder Owen Hargreaves, out injured with a broken leg since September.

Magath is hardly the first soccer manager to suffer the axe unjustly.

Vicente del Bosque was at the helm of Real Madrid from 1999 to 2003 when the Spanish outfit won two Champions League titles, two Spanish league championships, the Spanish Supercup, the European Supercup, and the Intercontinental Cup.

Shockingly, even though Del Bosque guided Los Merengues to one of its most successful periods in its history, Real did not renew the Spaniard's contract in 2003, announcing the decision just a day after he led the club to its 29th Spanish league title.

Luckily for Magath, he won't be unemployed for that long: Hamburg SV, for whom Magath scored the winning goal against Juventus in the 1983 European Cup final, is expected to name Magath as its new manager by the end of the week.

Bayern's loss is Hamburg's gain.