Football Bundesliga: Bayern is asking itself fundamental questions after the Frankfurt debacle

On Sunday, the guesswork at FC Bayern continued with great sympathy from their own fans, as the day before had resulted in the 1:5 (1:3) defeat at Eintracht Frankfurt. There was now a public training session on the club premises on Säbener Straße, which started around 35 minutes late. Practicing in front of an audience was actually planned for last week. But after heavy snowfall in Munich, the home game against Union Berlin and then the planned public training session had to be canceled.

In retrospect, this was unfortunate for several reasons. Firstly, when researching the causes of the desolate performance in Frankfurt, no external eyewitnesses could be heard who could describe their impressions of the training. And perhaps Bayern wouldn’t have experienced such an enormous drop in tension when practicing in front of an audience, which was now visible in Frankfurt.

Sporting director Christoph Freund noted in horror that the team had performed “without guts,” “without aggressiveness, without conviction.” Coach Thomas Tuchel spoke in astonishment of a “serious setback.” He said: “The result is brutal.” It didn’t look like “we were under high tension,” Tuchel continued. But he preferred to refrain from outbursts of anger. “There’s no point in beating on it now,” he said, referring to the opportunity on Tuesday to present himself better in the final group game of the Champions League against Manchester United.

Bayern have long since qualified for the round of 16 and are also confirmed as group winners. But at the legendary Old Trafford it’s all about prestige and now also about rehabilitation after the defeat in Frankfurt. In Manchester, the virtues that were implemented “poorly” are needed, said Tuchel. At one point, the soccer teacher even rated the team’s performance as “unsatisfactory.” Translated into school grades, this meant: virtues five, performance six. Or also: learning goal missed, transfer in acute danger. In the case of Bayern, at least the unofficial autumn championship title could be difficult. To make matters worse, Serge Gnabry suffered a muscle tendon injury in his left adductor area shortly after coming on as a substitute. The winger is out “for the time being,” the Munich team announced on Sunday.

Remarkable individual mistakes in Frankfurt contributed significantly to their third defeat of the season after the 0:3 in the Supercup against RB Leipzig and the 1:2 in the second round of the DFB Cup at third division club 1. FC Saarbrücken. Before Omar Marmoush made it 0-1 in the twelfth minute, Noussair Mazraoui made a completely unsuccessful attempt to free himself in his own penalty area before he stopped and shortly afterwards the offside was canceled. Before Éric Dina Ebimbes 0:2 (31st), Minjae Kim had the ball taken from Ansgar Knauff in a duel. Before Hugo Larsson’s 0:3 (36′), Joshua Kimmich had played a bad pass into the feet of the goalscorer in midfield. Kimmich’s right-footed shot from 20 meters to make it 1:3 (44th) could have been the signal for a comeback. But shortly after the break, central defender Dayot Upamecano lost the ball in the build-up like an over-motivated E-Junior running away, Ebimbe scored to make it 1-4 from Munich’s perspective (50th). Knauff’s goal to make it 1-5 after an hour brought back memories of Bayern’s visit to Eintracht on November 2, 2019, when they lost by the same result and fired coach Niko Kovac shortly afterwards.

That won’t happen to Tuchel now. But he and the Munich team are concerned with the question of how it could be that the team suffered such a comprehensive disaster. What was also astonishing was that it was a downfall with an announcement. Tuchel had already reported on Friday about the task of “maintaining tension” because of the nine days without games. He had said: “The speech was very direct and very demanding this week. We definitely didn’t want anyone to fall asleep.”

Apparently hardly anyone had really listened to him, or even worse, even ignored him. When looking for the reasons for the 1:5 conundrum, the question also arises as to whether something is fundamentally wrong in the team. Leon Goretzka didn’t want to blame the unusually long break in the game alone. There are “many explanations,” said the midfielder in the ZDF sports studio with deliberately chosen vagueness. In his opinion, one thing is certain: “Games like this simply shouldn’t happen to Bayern Munich.”