How could this week have gotten worse for Bayern Munich? After two humbling road losses that still threaten to have a profound effect on their season, with barely a shot of the substance fired in anger during that time, some might have suggested a little late weekend comfort food to mask their troubles, road in Bochum. . However, mischievous fate had played one last prank on them before Monday arrived.
Visitors to the Allianz Arena in recent years have long commented on the target music, a concept that isn’t for everyone at the best of times. The outrage at the inevitable concession at Bayern’s home is greeted by the outing of the can-can, played just a little too long to rub in that yes, your efforts are pointless and that yes, you are now very much in the mud.
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The only other club in the Bundesliga to lean on Offenbach to commemorate goals? That would be VfL Bochum. Their Vonovia Ruhrstadion couldn’t be more different from Bayern’s home, a wild chocolate box with a low roof and a ground that takes up about a third of the capacity of the champions’ den. So what better way to compound the gloom of another setback in Bayern’s current run – “a horror movie that doesn’t end,” as Bochum’s Leon Goretzka put it after the match – than 43 seconds of the can-can to signal from Takuma Asano Smartly taken equalizer in the first half? Bayern’s gloom is so great right now that it has never felt like the bottom of the well. Being gleefully mocked with their own party music (three times in the end) simply capped a chaotic week for Thomas Tuchel and his players.
That this was the second time in three seasons that Bayern have gone down in Bochum, a club with a small part of their resources – even though they have beaten them 7-0 twice in the meantime, in this match last season and before this season at the Allianz Arena – may indicate more of a long-term malaise, but the present is inescapable for the time being. Tuchel often does his best to avoid reality, and was widely ridiculed for his post-match interview with Dazn, in which he said his team’s 3-2 defeat “wasn’t deserved” and pointed out the 3.4 xG from Bavaria. But even the coach who decried that “Murphy’s Law applied today, [because] everything that could go wrong did go wrong” was forced to admit that retaining the Bundesliga is “not that realistic at the moment” having opened up an eight-point lead behind rampant Bayer Leverkusen.
This is the first time in almost nine years that Bayern have lost three in a row and the last time, in May 2015, featured two Bundesliga defeats that barely registered, with the title long in the bag, on either side of the infamous dismantling of Lionel Messi. by Jérôme Boateng in the semi-final of the Champions League at Camp Nou. The widespread meme-ing of that never sat well with this column, with a certain ridiculousness hanging over the idea of mocking a player for being tricked by the world’s best.
It’s hard to imagine any of this week’s perpetrators coming so close to greatness at this point. Leroy Sané was on a rampage after Wednesday’s miserable defeat at Lazio, coming from 2-1 down with Bayern on Sunday, teaming up with new signing Bryan Zaragoza, ahead of Joshua Kimmich and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, to try to inject some enthusiasm into this latest stagnation inject. But, as Kicker’s Mario Krischel put it, their flair was more than offset by the fact that they “didn’t participate in the defensive line.” [side of the] game.” And Bayern defended terribly. For the second consecutive game, Dayot Upamecano gave away a penalty and was shown a red card in the same action – in both cases it was converted into a winner, by Ciro Immobile and Bochum’s excellent Kevin Stöger. To top it off the highlight was Kimmich, who sat on the bench with a face like thunder after being replaced (after a poor performance in which he was complicit in Asano’s goal), while they were rowing full-time, had to be pulled apart from Tuchel’s assistant Zsolt Löw.
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As things stand, the current Bayern generation would be grateful to reach the last eight of a competition their club has won six times, let alone have the honor of being defeated single-handedly by one of the world’s biggest players in the last four. This is not the Bayern of 2015 and Tuchel is not Pep Guardiola, but perhaps more relevantly, the current incarnation of this proud club is nowhere near the monster of efficiency with which the name has become synonymous. If it was anything close, Tuchel would have been looking for other work some time ago. That Bayern are unable and/or unwilling to even take action as their campaign falls apart at the seams is an indictment of what a fundamentally weak institution they now are, far removed from the stability of previous years.
Even Harry Kane is indicative of the problems. In some ways, the move for Kane has been a resounding success. He scored his 25th Bundesliga goal of the season here (although he missed players who would have made the score 2-0 or 3-3 either side, but that’s hardly the main problem), but the feeling lingers that his signing just not the kind of deal a functional Bayern would do. Kane has been hugely impressive both on and off the pitch and has glossed over a plethora of issues with an unbalanced squad. The England captain deserves a better supporting cast and should somehow get one next season.
Tuchel will stay for now because there is no real alternative, no decisive next step. There are few prospects of salvaging this season in any meaningful way, so it might be better to hope for an upturn in the current dip in form (which is certainly possible) rather than write off the whole exercise with the Bundesliga and Champions League. still in play, at least theoretically. Still, he will certainly be gone if Bayern can upgrade. He was relied on too heavily in last summer’s transfer strategy, with a power vacuum above it. That must be sealed before Bayern can move forward.
Cologne 0-1 Werder Bremen, Heidenheim 1-2 Bayer Leverkusen, Hoffenheim 0-1 Union Berlin, Mainz 1-0 Augsburg, Darmstadt 1-2 Stuttgart, Wolfsburg 1-1 Borussia Dortmund, Leipzig 2-0 Mönchengladbach, Freiburg 3-3 Frankfurt, Bochum 3-2 Bayern Munich
Discussion points
• Leverkusen continues to show all the swagger (and grit) that Bayern lacks, recording a victory over stubborn Heidenheim, with Jeremy Frimpong again decisive, scoring the opening goal near half-time, before on-loan Mo Dahoud sealed the goal late on. Even the cancellation of their flight north after the match, which forced Xabi Alonso’s men to make a 400km bus journey back and write off their Saturday evening, could not dampen the mood.
• Spicy was a word you could use to describe the ongoing protests against private equity investments, with further lengthy disruptions to all matches. This time, fans in Cologne and Rostock put remote-controlled cars on the field to disrupt the matches. An amusing episode in Cologne involved Werder Bremen substitute Justin Njinmah unsuccessfully trying to kick one of the cars off the pitch, although he did later come on and score the winning goal. The discomfort caused by the peaceful protests is real, and both Niclas Füllkrug and Emre Can made their frustration clear after Borussia Dortmund’s 1-1 draw at Wolfsburg. Meaningful dialogue between authorities and supporter groups is inevitable to break the impasse, with Cologne’s ultras calling in a statement for a revote “which must take place publicly and not in secret.”
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Pos |
Team |
P |
GD |
Ptn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Bayer Leverkusen |
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|
2 |
Bayern Munich |
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|
3 |
Stuttgart |
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|
4 |
Borussia Dortmund |
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|
5 |
RB Leipzig |
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|
6 |
Eintracht Frankfurt |
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|
7 |
Werder Bremen |
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|
8 |
Freiburg |
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|
9 |
Hoffenheim |
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|
10 |
Heidenheim |
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|
11 |
VfL Bochum |
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|
12 |
Wolfsburg |
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|
13 |
Union Berlin |
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|
14 |
Augsburg |
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|
15 |
Borussia M’gladbach |
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|
16 |
Cologne |
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|
17 |
Mainz |
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18 |
Darmstadt |