Nicolas Kühn (right )’s leadership gate had Bayern tremblers around Raphaël Guerreiro.
Photo: Imago/Ulrich Gamel
Sometimes a sentence is enough to describe the overall situation. As is well known, Thomas Müller often has something to say, but the veteran of FC Bayern also knows when it is better to hold back. On Tuesday evening he had only been substituted against Celtic Glasgow in the last minute of stoppage time. In such a case, he then leaves the first on the microphones. But this time Müller is not very quiet. It was not confident, he said in passing, “but we got on”.
Loss of dominance
The appearance of FC Bayern in the Champions League could not have been summarized in the second leg of the playoffs for the round of 16. The sentence could also be interpreted in such a way that the loss of dominance against the Scots, the trembling until the added time, before the redeeming equalization was achieved, was the exception-and on Sunday Frankfurt in the Bundesliga was played on the wall as a matter of course. Also five days later Stuttgart and then Leverkusen or Athletico Madrid in the round of 16 of the premier class, which will be drawn on Friday. But of course it wasn’t meant by Müller.
After such a evening, in which the success of the entire season had been at the game, the Munich tried to focus on reaching the round of 16. “We are through, that’s the most important thing,” said sports director Max Eberl.
Raise the voice
Sport is not everything these days. Socially, the President of FC Bayern, Herbert Hainer, sees the club demanded shortly before the Bundestag election in view of the strength of the AfD. “There are certain points in a society, there should be an association and his personalities and raise their voice,” he says on Wednesday. FC Bayern is “aware of its social responsibility, and the freedom-democratic basic order in the Federal Republic of Germany is a unique asset”. Hainer appealed to “actively work for our democracy”.
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On Tuesday evening, the Munich focused on their core business. “Football,” Eberl admits, be it “not the revelation”. Neither against Celtic nor a few days earlier in the Bundesliga top game against Bayer Leverkusen. “We didn’t show our best football twice,” says Eberl. In fact, it was only offered in phases in the games before. A trend is recognizable, not a good one, especially in a year in which the Champions League final is firmly anchored in its own stadium in the minds of Bavaria. And now Harry Kane also threatens to fall out. The striker had to fit on Tuesday because of a damaged ankle at half -time.
Fitness and error chains
The lightness and naturalness with which Bayern had often convinced with a few exceptions in the first half of the season is gone. It may play a role that on Tuesday the freshness, the physical and spiritual, was missing in six days after three games. “It’s not so easy to get through the program and say that we go in fully,” said coach Vincent Kompany.
Nevertheless, too many misfortunes happen in defense and too few surprising actions happen on the offensive. Celtic’s tour of the former Bayern player Nicolas Kühn was a “chain of errors”, Joshua Kimmich admits, but the alphonso Davies, who has just returned from an injury, is also evidence of an intact mentality for Eberl. Kimmich thinks you have to buy “better game management”, “so that it doesn’t look so much like fighting and cramp”.
What the Munich people do better than in the past season is to deal with setbacks. After the 0: 1, “we didn’t completely lose our heads,” said midfield chief Kimmich. Bavaria kept control. However, Celtic Glasgow, who had survived a Champions League preliminary round twelve years ago, was not a real indicator. It is now coming in the round of 16.